by Amiel Lacorte and Noemi Baysa
“The New Normal – Education Post COVID 19,” a free online global conference for teachers by teachers, will be held on May 30, 2020 from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. EDT (from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Philippine Standard Time) to bring together teachers from different parts of the world to share their experiences and stories.
As of May 22, 2020, around 30,000 educators have already registered for this global event organized by T4 to place the teachers in what the team referred to as the heart of the conversations and solutions.
The virtual conference, to be hosted by Vikas Pota, a globally respected leader in education, will discuss the most important issues in teaching today which include teacher well-being, teacher leadership, teacher technology, and teacher collaboration in the hope of shaping the new normal in education.
T4 Agenda include a keynote on Education disrupted – education rebuilt from Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education & Skills, OECD, France; remarks on Fighting for teachers by David Edwards, General Secretary of Education International in Belgium; talks on Professional calling to teacher agency and teacher advocacy in times of uncertainty by Yasodai Selvakumaran, Humanities Teacher, Rooty Hill High School in Australia and Armand Doucet, Teacher, Riverview Middle School, Canada; a discussion on Giving girls a voice by Zainuddin Yousufzai, Teacher, Malala’s father and a peace, women’s rights and education activist in UK; and remarks on Making up for the learning loss by Jaime Saavedra, Global Director of Education, World Bank, USA.
Koen Timmers, Computer Science Teacher in Belgium, Jaipriya Balaji, High School Math and Physics teacher at National Public School in India, and Professor AnnMarie Thomas, Director, Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas in USA will have talks on Teacher Technology – What actually works? while Banky Wellington, Singer, Rapper, and Actor in Nigeria and Folawe Omikunle, CEO of Teach for Nigeria in Nigeria will discuss Why teachers matter. Madhav Chavan, Founder, Pratham in India and Danielle van Eck, Physics Teacher at Protea Heights Academy in South Africa will talk about Collaborative communities with collective teacher efficacy.
The conference will be moderated by Elisa Guerra, Member of UNESCO International Commission on Futures of Education in Mexico; Andrew Jack, Global Education Editor of Financial Times in UK; Esteban Bullrich, Senator & Former Minister of Education in Argentina; Ross McGill, Founder & CEO of Teacher Toolkit in UK; and Vikas Pota, former Chief Executive of the Varkey Foundation that launched the Global Teacher Prize.
Vikas, a driving force in the education, international development, philanthropy and technology sectors, initiated the conference together with a team of multi-awarded educators and champions of teachers from different parts of the world: Armand Doucet from Canada; Senator Esteban Bullrich from Argentina; Koen Timmers from Belgium; Marjorie Brown from South Africa; Nadia Lopez from New York City; Francis Jim Tuscano from Philippines; Ramya Venkatraman from India; Temitope Ifegbesan from Nigeria; David Edwards from Brussels; and Vijita Patel from London.
As a prelude to their much-awaited event, the team will hold A T4 Conference Preview which will be streamed on their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 from 6:45 a.m. to 8:00 am EDT (6:45 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. PST). To cater to more educators around the globe, Arabic and Spanish live streams (with live translators) will be done on YouTube.
T4 Teachers’ Voice Survey, an online poll to hear teachers thoughts about school opening and other important issues in the New Normal, has also been launched and will end on Wednesday, May 27, 2020.