Building Future Success through Collaboration

 

One of TYO's main goals as an organization is to improve the abilities of children from marginalized areas so that they may be able to function effectively within their communities. In the Core Child Program we work to inspire children to realize their potential as healthy, active and responsible as community members. With that in mind, this past week children in the Core Child Program spent time working to develop their collaboration skills.

With only two weeks left of the Spring session, this is a crucial time of the program where children are putting together all of the skills they've been developing throughout the session- such as listening, respect for one another, and a greater sense of responsibility to the community. Activities during this past week were carefully designed to have children use all of this skills in order to show effective group work. Children this week get the chance to work on creative activities that mostly depend on collaborative kind of tasks that serve both educative purposes and children's passion for enjoyment. Children created a variety of art activities where they had to plan and work together in order to achieve a group task, while still being given the creative space to express their inner thoughts and feelings.

In the digital age it has become particularly critical for children to master this skill of collaboration if they hope to be successful in the future workplace. Widespread use of computers and the internet have enabled people to connect from all over the world. Children must learn early on effective communication as well as the responsibilities they have to each other within group work if they hope to grow and adapt successfully within the digital environment. However, practicing collaborative work-offline is just as important as mastering the skills online. An article by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development reports that children need to think through and practice positive social responses, starting with face-to-face interaction. We all have a tendency to model the behaviors we see. As teachers it is much easier to intervene and correct behavior in the offline, face-to-face world than it is to monitor digital communication. As such it is tremendously important that we are able to root positive communication and collaboration skills early on in children's development.

As a Core Child teacher, I strongly believe in all of the children that come to TYO and their abilities to overcome their hard life conditions and to build a brighter future for themselves and their country.

-Ahmed B., Core Child Teacher

This program - as part of Student Training and Employment Program (STEP!) - is sponsored in part by the Abdul Hamid Shoman Foundation.