Teaching teachers in Georgia about birds
In 2019 BRC started an educational project involving schools, teachers and Georgian conservationists, with the support of British Birds Charitable Trust (BBCT) and IJsvogelfonds of Birdlife the Netherlands. The aim of the project was to bring birds into Georgian schools as a teaching tool, empowering teachers more in the educational process than in content development. The project mostly reaches the villages which are close to the count stations. In September 2019 we organised the first two workshops with the teachers of the schools involved.
The project unfortunately had to stop due to COVID, but this actually led us to work on the edition of an educational booklet in kartuli for teachers and educators. This resulted in a beautiful work of art, with many illustrations. The 60-page book is ready to print now and will show educators how to teach students about birds, their biology, ecology, migration and conservation. At the end of the book there are 6 proposals for activities to do throughout the year. Teachers can choose to adapt these activities to their groups to explore nature through birds. This new material has been developed together with the Georgian teachers and considered all the material already created beforehand in the country. We hope it will be a very useful tool for educational centres throughout Georgia.
During the next season we will also develop a calendar with bird-related activities. After the teachers and their students have worked with the book for a while, we want to organise field trips for the schools already next year.
Drawings were made by Elien Hoekstra and Rafa Benjumea and many thanks to our Elza Makaradze, Aslan Bolkvadze and Dachi Shoshitashvili