This summer saw the exciting addition of our Storytelling for Teachers online course! This 4-week programme is one of five online teacher training courses, and is designed to equip educators with essential storytelling techniques to enhance classroom engagement.
How our course began
So, how did it come about? Lewis School of English has been lucky enough to be supported by Cambridge Nazareth Trust (CNT) in delivering training to teachers in schools of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (LPJ) since 2013. Although much of this training was initially in person in Jordan, Israel and Palestine, the transition to online training inevitably came along when we were all told to stay home and stay safe in 2020.
Our suite of online courses
Fortunately, we had just finished designing our first suite of online teacher courses, and the LPJ teachers took to this digital environment with the positive attitude and endless enthusiasm we knew them to have! Our courses on Helping Students with Pronunciation, Student-Centred Teaching and Getting Creative with Resources proved popular, with a steady stream of teachers enrolling over the following years, and Communicative Teaching and Activities was added in 2022.
Launching our first Storytelling for Teachers course
Despite the most challenging of times for our teachers in Palestine, they came to us with a request in April 2024. Aware that we ran storytelling courses for learners of English, they asked if we could create an online storytelling course for teachers. A collaboration between our teacher training and theatre staff led to the creation of a 4-module course exploring drama-based activities, voice work, text selection, story writing, character development and storytelling techniques. Teachers were grouped according to their learners’ ages with content tailored to their needs, and the final module saw them sharing their own wonderfully creative stories by video.
This course is now available to all, and we extend our thanks to CNT for their support and to the LPJ teachers, and can’t wait to see where their storytelling adventures take them!
For more information about the course, visit our Storytelling for Teachers page or browse our online teacher training platform, Lewis Online Learning.
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