Initiativeness is Getting More and More Significance

Ashot Bleyan

The Educomplex is introduced to Microsoft program "Partners in Learning Network" by the director of the Educomplex 

What is the vision for your school over the next 3 to 5 years?

The vision has been determined by the 2013-2016 development program of the Educomplex. The author educational program, the creator’s school is a full educational program which is worked out by the learners and their parents, teachers and our partners. The school is mobile and with its project “Classroom on the Wheels” shares the innovative IT experience with the schools in different regions of Armenia.

Please give one example with a concrete description on an innovative or interesting practice that takes place at your school today on one of the topics below (you can look at the Hot Topics pages for more information on these topics). Please also give concrete details of how and what technologies are supporting your innovations with the topic you selected.

To realize our educational program “Notebook is my Classmate”, beginning from September 1 of the 2013-2014 academic year, all the 150 teachers and 2100 learners of the Educomplex come to school with their own notebook/net-books and are involved in the project based teaching-learning process, and the educational environment is not only the Educomplex but also the museums, exhibition halls, concert halls, scientific laboratories, historical monuments, countryside, families and streets. The teaching process is also organized in the form of a camp, planaire painting, gathering, review, exhibition, concert. Learners of different ages, various specialists, parents become teachers. Learners’ continuously changing life becomes the result of education.

What evidence do you have of the impact these innovations have had on your school and the wider community?

The community, as well as our Educomplex, have become more united, inclusive, saving-preserving, developing and stimulating development, more capable and initiative.

Please describe the innovations that your school is planning for the next two years and how they align with your school’s vision. Please provide specific examples of these innovations.

An expeditional field camp will be launched, which will help us to organize mobile creative gatherings in the regions of our Republic all the year round. They will involve the learners, teachers and other specialists of the given community. The individualization of education and the complete launching of digital world will make the Educomplex more mobile.

How has your school influenced others locally, nationally and internationally?

The influence has been achieved with:

• multilingual and recognized school website having an open system of realization and spreading the author educational programs worked out at the Educomplex
• organization of teacher training courses for the teachers of our Republic
• educational exchanges with comfortable accomodation in the schools of the Educomplex
• annual open reviews, educational camps and open creative gatherings.

The geography of educational exchanges spreads to Georgia, Artsakh, Argentina and Turkey. More and more often they become group or individual initiatives as educational projects.

As a school leader, what do you see as your role?

More and more I act as the coordinator of educational projects distributing the budgetary and extrabudgetary means as righteous and target investments in the educational projects by the ratio of 50-50.

What percentage of your staff is currently actively developing their own leadership skills and what kinds of support and opportunities do they receive?

Each teacher of the Educomplex has to work out and realize educational projects. In fact each teacher coordinates and heads educational projects and has to display his abilities of a leader. Team or group activities are encouraged. Planning is done with the principle of developing successful initiatives. An educational project can’t be realized without new partners and involving new resources. A teacher, who is only a passive consumer and command executor, has to make way for a more initiative one by leaving his/her position.

Can you please give an example of an initiative that was not mandatory but every single member of your staff got involved?

Participation in the realization of the educational projects “Culture on the Wheels”, “Classroom on the Wheels”, “Educational Summer” was not considered to be mandatory but these projects are successfully realized in the result of which we have our learners’ and teachers’ choirs and summer camps in Yerevan. All the teachers of the Educomplex have participated in the project "Classroom on the Wheels". The main aim of this project is sharing our innovative experience in using IT means with other schools in Armenia.

How does your school recognize early leadership skills of the students and how do you encourage staff to develop these skills in their students?

There are certain activities at the Educomplex the planning and realization of which are carried on by the students of different grades. These activities reveal the leader’s abilities of the students. One of these activities is “General Morning Trainings”. All the teachers and students gather in the marble hall before classes every morning to watch and listen to an electronic 15-minute-presentation on a huge screen made by a leader student with the members of his small team. All the students of our high school are involved in this or that school club activities according to their preferences. The leaders of these clubs take part in the real social life of the city and republic. For example, the info club members work like real journalists during major educational events. In this way our educators do not try to solve our students’ most important self establishing and self expressing problems. We give chances to them to be self expressed and self established in real life.

What does your school hope to achieve by being a Mentor School?

To get new clients and partners so that we could work out and share our author educational programs; To refine the teacher's school with a higher level of performance and self expression; To get new international criteria of evaluation and further educational exchanges;