After the East Allen County Schools board heard a consultant’s report last week recommending changes in the way the board does business, President Neil Reynolds suggested a next step that is all too common among Indiana’s local electedA drive across the city or from Adams County brought most of the educators to a Fort Wayne workshop on project-based learning. For Ayesha Kasuri, it was a series of flights from Lahore, Pakistan, to participate in the most “convenient” session.
Kasuri directs the only project-based learning school in Pakistan. She traveled here this month to learn the latest techniques in using that approach, which she’ll take back to her teachers in August. They, in turn, will share it with their 240 students at TNS Beaconhouse in Lahore.
Trained in Montessori education in Denver, Kasuri directed early childhood programs in Texas and Virginia, then studied the child-centered Reggio Emilia approach in Singapore before returning to Pakistan and joining Beaconhouse, a company operating schools there. TNS Beaconhouse offers an approach that will help children develop “lateral thinking and problem-solving, not merely the acquisition of facts.”
Kasuri said she began following the Buck Institute for Education’s work and liked the way its project-based learning approach emphasized core curriculum.
“This is authentic learning,” she said. “It’s so structured and well-designed.”
After three days of workshop training in Fort Wayne, she planned to participate in a program at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Ill., both as a student and presenter.
In August, she’ll be back in Lahore, putting skills learned in Fort Wayne to work.
