First Step Towards Village Schools

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We are now running our program, once under the name of Children's Workshops as from 2017, as the First Step Towards Village Schools Program (FSVS) as of 2020-2021 academic year.

Why?

There is no practice-oriented study in the education faculties of universities regarding teaching in villages and especially education in multi-grade classes. Newly graduated teachers may encounter many problems for the first time, especially when they are assigned to villages in the first years of their careers. Besides the difficulties experienced in the classroom, they also have to seek solutions to problems arising from the specific cultural and physical dynamics of village life, on their own. As KODA, we regard that our responsibility to meet the above-mentioned needs is to prepare teacher candidates for teaching in villages before they graduate, by collaborating with universities.

How?

We aim to make undergraduate teacher candidates more willing and ready to work in rural schools when they graduate. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a curriculum that can be applied in education faculties. In this curriculum, we included contents that bring together academy and field studies, field practices, and KODA's knowledge of rural schools to date. During the program, we ensure that teacher candidates gain knowledge and experience about rural schools, thus making their lives easier when they are first appointed to the village.

What are we doing?

We continue this program together with the universities we cooperate with, within the scope of their Community Service Practices, Life Science Teaching, Teaching Practice and Alternative Practices in Primary School courses. The program proceeds with the cooperation of academics, rural school teachers and university students; it consists of theoretical courses given at the university and 6 workshops held in rural schools. In theoretical courses at the university, education faculty students are instructed with a general framework about rural education in Turkey and are given theoretical information that they can use in workshop practices.