Islamabad (Muhammad Yasir) The 7th Teacher’s Literature Festival (TLF) was held at the Federal College of Education by Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA). With the attendance of over 700 teachers, the festival was filled with excitement and eagerness to learn different ways of teaching and delivering material effectively during classes. TLF started in 2014 with the Board of Directors of CLF wanting to engage teachers in the process of loving literature as well. Future teachers in training from Federal College of Education eagerly attended the workshops. Ali Raza started the festival with theatrical Punjabi poetry. Dr. Jamil Bajwa welcomed the participants to the fest. CLF Advisor and Founder of the Children’s Literature Festival (CLF), Baela Raza Jamil expressed her enthusiasm saying “We hope that teachers will take what they learn today and implement it to create a more inclusive and creative learning environment for our children.” The festival started off with a motivational warm up session by Khadijah Bakhtiar, words of appreciation and encouragement by Nargis Sultana – Country Director Open Society Foundations and short Punjabi poetry recital by Nasreen Iqbal.
“This is such a fruitful platform to train the teachers and encourage them to pass on the information, not only to students but other teachers and school management as well,” said the teachers attending from Federal College of Education. Sessions from the day included; Art of Storytelling session by OUP, Role of teachers in the protection of children by Samina Sardar of British Council, Digital learning and STEAM sessions by Taleemabad, Oxbridge and Teletaleem how to do a CLF in your school by CLF/ITA team, critical thinking: 3 Cs by Knowledge Platform, Recycling Activities by Waste Hero.
Other resource persons from the day included; Sehrish Farooq, Fizza Abbas, Inam Elahi, Aamna Khan and Ali Raza.
Country Director Open Society Foundations; Nargis Sultana said, “TLF is a critical part of the social movement on reframing education and learning as well as creating content for meaningful education in Pakistan.”
With the ending of such lively two days of the Children’s Literature Festival, the Teacher’s Literature Festival ensured an even more inspiring closing to the festivities of learning. With that, the CLF team leaves Lahore in hope of a change in thinking and systems of education with an emphasis on literature.
