TFL as community of learners

TFL as community of learners

We believe we are all learners, and we are here to build a community of learners. This is the statement we made at the beginning of our Afterschool program this year. We talked about so many things in the first two weeks, about TFL programs, we talked about who we are as a group, what we do at TFL, and why? We talked about specific programs we have designed as a the Fanos Light, its purpose and why it’s important. We talked about the importance of values, and the values of TFL, we talked about our responsibilities and expectations while participating in the program, we talked about our responsibilities, and how we all put an effort to make TFL and our program better. We also talked about the challenges, the limitations we have as a group, as organization and even as individuals. We talked about so many things related to education, and our programs, our ambitions, our goals and plans through this program and we made one big statement as a group and we said, ” We are community of learners that we come to TFL as learners.”

That is why when we come to TFL with the purpose of learning for we believe we are all learners. We know learning happens everywhere, and it happens any time. We learn from our homes, from school, from the community we become a part of, we learn in various ways as well, we learn by reading, writing, through communication, asking questions, by listening, through art, through being engaged in activities, and through various means we learn. That is why we underline this statement and said we are all learners and a community of learners. That is why when we come to TFL we come with the expectation of learning something, we come to learn through the means we are provided, that means through the activities and programs that was designed at TFL. As you know we have programs related to reading, writing, art, design its science, mentoring, sport, and by visiting places with the purpose of learning.

The last one month has been quite an interesting journey for us all as a group. We often affirm our statement that at TFL we are a community of learners. Through I was coordination and managing the program I indicated to the children coming to our program and the volunteers to take the responsibility of planning and teaching us things they are interested about, or about things they want to learn about, and I have seen some inspiring moments of learning throughout our Tuesday and Friday programs. What we did was we assigned someone, a student or a volunteer, or me to take a responsibility of teaching something on the day. So, the person who is assigned would spend some time to come of with ideas, or plans, then we would involve in the planning process together, that means ones the person knows what he/she want to teach , would briefly explain the plan, and what is needed to tech the lesson, then we would buy all the supplies we need for that lesson or that day. Then the person who are teaching on that day would prepare the activity and arrange the place and the materials needed and would spend some time to give us a brief description of the lesson, its objectives, what we need. As I indicated we have seen the glimpse of what we said, for we have seen very encouraging and inspiring moments of learning. I have seen a skill, and knowledge and potential of these children, I have seen their ability to think, to plan, to design and being creative and teach a lesson, or run an activity. I have seen the level of the engagement, interaction, working together, collaboration, and more importantly active engagement of everyone who come to the program. I am so grateful to see this is happening at TFL because we believe we are community of learners where we learn from each other in a more safe, respectful, conducive environment for learning. We know there are so much work to be done, so many things need to improve our programs, but we have seen a glimpse of moment that would make us a community of learners. We believe we are community of learners that come together for the purpose of learning and for the purpose of creating a learning environment that is conducive for learning and growth.