The fifth of October is World Teacher’s Day, an occasion on which we want to remember the importance of this figure in the digital education programme that ProFuturo has been carrying out for three years. During this time, in addition to benefiting 10 million children, we have trained more than 300,000 teachers in some 3,000 schools in 34 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Teachers represent one of the strongest and most influential forces with a view to ensuring equity, access and quality of education; they are key to sustainable global development. By adopting Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, and its target 4.c, which recognises the key role of teachers in achieving the goals of the 2030 Education Agenda, World Teachers’ Day has become an occasion to highlight the progress achieved and reflect on the ways to face the pending challenges in order to promote the teaching profession.
According to the Unesco Institute of Statistics (UIS), it will be necessary to contract 69 million teachers to guarantee universal primary and secondary education by 2030, which shows that there is a shortage of teachers properly trained worldwide.
Therefore, UNESCO has made the offer of properly trained, supported and qualified teachers one of its absolute priorities. Under this premise, it has appealed to Member States to ensure that teachers and educators “have the necessary skills, are properly contracted and paid, receive good training, are professionally qualified and motivated, are distributed in an equitable and effective way throughout the education system, and receive support within effective and well-managed, resourceful systems”.
For ProFuturo, educators are a key figure in the education system. Our experience in digital solutions provides them with the best educational tools to develop their skills and support their students in the learning process.
ProFuturo’s educational proposal trains teachers in the use of various digital tools and empowers them to use them in the best possible way in the classroom. The new technologies we apply, based on digital education and other tools, help us to ensure that teachers have personalised learning resources.
With our education, we promote the learning model of an “activator” teacher who motivates students and gets the best from them, making it easier for the teacher to track individual students and assess their learning.
Some testimonials from our teachers
In these three years, we have received numerous accounts from teachers of the 31 countries in which we are currently present. This article aims to gather a small selection of what they feel every day when working with ProFuturo.
“Everything we need fits in this suitcase: digital content that overcomes the distance for millions of children to fulfil their dreams,” says one teacher at the Virgen del Carmen Educational Institution in Quiquijana, Quispicanchi, Cusci (Peru)
“I believe this project facilitates integration into the teaching environment. The classrooms on the platform combine with some disciplines. When there is a children’s digital classroom, they are needed and highly participatory,” says Biabilto Baptipsta, a teacher at the Carlo Steeb School in Angola.
“ProFuturo has supposed an added value for teachers by offering them a different experience and allowing them to integrate new teaching techniques in the classes. Learning is not just memorising or reading: it also occurs through play, stories and songs,” says Manuela, an English teacher at the Jesuit Refugee Service in Lebanon.
The vast majority agree that it is a very enriching experience for their teaching practices, something that encourages us to continue working to reach thousands of teachers in the next year.
