Education is changing along with classroom behaviour. Teachers are becoming co-learners and guides while students help their partners in project-based learning.

One example is a mentoring process at medical schools. The three-step method is sometimes called: “See One, Do One, Teach One”. It is used to teach simple procedures such as performing a surgical suture, a task that requires both knowledge and practice. First, the student observes how the stitching is done. Then, he or she does it. Finally, he or she teaches the newly acquired skill to a novice.

Heifer International, a nonprofit working to eradicate poverty and hunger, uses a parallel process with farmers. A family is given an animal and learns how to care for it. They donate its first off-spring to a neighbour. All families in the project “pay it forward” like this. As they mentor each other and collaborate, the project grows in a sustainable way.

The Youth Media Project

We used mentoring and project-based learning methods in a cross-cultural photography project involving student groups in Nepal and the US. One group is from the Tri-Ratna Cooperative School (TRCS) of Bungamati, near Kathmandu, and the other is from the Institute for Collaborative Education (ICE) in New York City. The Youth Media Project focuses first on photography and story-making skills, and then on strategies for teaching those skills to other students. A simplified diagram of the five-step lesson plan looks like this:

We did three months of onsite mentoring, in-classroom coaching and action planning with TRCS and its school management team. At ICE, a teacher engaged a select group of students for an entire semester. Both groups had a face-to-face session at TRCS. Fourteen ICE Students and two teachers went to Nepal. They packed 30 digital cameras, laptops and lesson plans in photography and story-making skills for 28 TRCS students.

The challenge for the teams: “Here’s a camera; use it to tell two stories – one about yourself – and one about your family and community.”

The ICE students used the lesson plans they had developed and practised with in New York to impart multi-media skills to their TRCS partners. They also showed them how to exhibit their photo stories.

In April, Bungamati was among the districts affected by Nepal’s earthquake. Several teachers lost their homes and at least one has had to live in a tent. ICE and TRCS have plans to continue their cooperation through a teacher to teacher program although immediate implementation may be affected by the quake aftermath.

Students from both institutions, divided into seven teams, gathered in the TRCS library.	For many TRCS students, it was their first experience in learning how to handle a camera and using it to create their own stories.
A mother and child viewing an exhibit as its creator explains his work during the exhibition.	The whole school, as well as parents and members of the community,came to view and comment on the Youth Media Project exhibition.

Loren Weybright (weybright@gmail.com) is a coach in international professional education development based in Brooklyn, New York. Steve Harrington (stevehar11201@gmail. com) is an ICA Global Archives volunteer interested in global education and lives near Minneapolis. Shoot, share and learn