Sabine Bohlen-Roß is our Senior Expert for Teacher Training:

During every stay, training sessions and workshops on basic pedagogical knowledge and the practical application of the knowledge acquired took place. Important was and remains, however, the repeatedly necessary, child-friendly design of the rooms and school grounds, as well as the meaningful implementation of lesson and daily schedules.

© Andreas Roß, Okakarara

The Senior Expert Service (SES) sends experts from all over the world to countries where development cooperation is needed after thorough vetting. Through a small appeal by the SES in the newspaper, Sabine Bohlen-Roß, a social pedagogue and Gestalt therapist at the Schule an der Gartenstadt school in Hamburg, came to our project in Okakarara. That was eight years ago. Since then, she has become indispensable to steps and is a great help: this year, she was in Namibia again for four weeks and provided the teachers with intensive and sustainable pedagogical and psychological training.

My first assignment in 2012 was to adapt the government curriculum to the teachers’ level of knowledge on site and, of course, to teach the curriculum content.

© Andreas Roß, Okakarara

The further development of such a curriculum for preschool and afternoon classes at steps for children remains one of the tasks every year. However, guidance on structuring the working day is also an important component of the training, as is the expansion and deepening of learning concepts in the areas of early mathematics, the importance of play in child development, and the role of the teacher. Together with project manager Sonja Schneider-Waterberg, methods and knowledge are conveyed effectively and promptly despite different cultural and ethical values and mentalities as well as language barriers. Through her annual visits and training sessions, Sabine Bohlen-Roß can repeatedly see for herself the successful application of the teaching sequences developed previously, or make a fresh start and adapt the training measures.

We sincerely thank SES for enabling us to deploy Sabine and other experts so continuously for our projects in Namibia – it is a great benefit to the quality of our work and brings cultures together in an intensive way to learn with and from one another!

Many thanks to you too, dear Sabine, for your valuable support!