Teachers' Voices Episode 1

Join educational researcher Nina Alonso for a new podcast series as she shares powerful stories from teachers around the world, talking in their own words about their own experiences.

Welcome to the first episode of Teachers’ Voices where you’ll hear three very different stories of teachers teaching in very different learning environments. These educators all share a passionate commitment to the particular needs of individual learners.

Joining Nina today is our special guest, Nora Marketos. Nora is the co-lead of the Learning Schools portfolio of the Jacobs Foundation and in her role she supports schools and school networks worldwide to develop, share and replicate promising and best practices that improve learning outcomes in diverse classroom contexts.

“This podcast brings together teachers’ voices in a short, but really powerful manner. And it complements their stories with existing research and evidence of what is already working. This provides a bridge between the teaching community on the one hand and those researchers who are seeking to better understand how we can help children learn and develop.”

In today’s episode, Nina hears about:

  • The challenges of accelerating basic literacy in a rural community in Mozambique: “In our province, which is the most populous province in the country, only one out of 10 children can read Grade Two stories.” (Armando, a teaching facilitator in Mozambique).
  • The enjoyment of developing creative ways to stimulate the interest of unmotivated students in mathematics, in a socially deprived area in Brazil.
  • A teacher’s motivation to improve the reading skills of girls with severe dyslexia in Saudi Arabia: “I told her [mother] that your daughter is like a gift that is wrapped in gold paper. But this paper is too thick, and it needs careful unwrapping. By the time you unwrap her potential, you will see a star inside that golden box.”