Rukshana Munir has been a teacher for six years, and currently works at Government Girls’ Primary School What, Garam Chashma, in Chitral, Pakistan. She has noticed that getting parents to meaningfully engage in their children’s education has proven to be the biggest challenge. She notes that parental involvement is very important for better outcomes in students, so when this is lacking it can make teaching students more challenging.
Rukshana notes that this is often not the fault of the parents, who are facing many challenges, such as work and low income. She believes that by creating better support for her students families and communities will in turn ensure parents become more involved in their children’s learning.
Schools2030’s Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach gave Rukshana the skills to look at her students and their wider community holistically. Before this, she had not considered the impact home life, mental and physical health and wellbeing could have on her student’s learning.
“HCD gives us the opportunity to systematically explore our students’ needs, desires, interests and motivations before designing any solutions. Before this, I was only looking at their cognitive development. I find myself more empathetic towards my students as a result of taking this holistic view.”
Rukshana Munir, Government Girls’ Primary School What, Garam Chashma, in Chitral, Pakistan
Rukshana worked with her colleagues to co-create an innovation focussing on using a print-rich environment to improve Urdu skills in students. A print-rich environment is when students are immersed in examples of reading materials - books, posters, word cards and other materials that help them to comprehend the meaning of the words and sentences that they are learning.
“I believe I am not just a teacher now, but a researcher, a designer and a leader too!”
Rukshana Munir, Government Girls’ Primary School What, Garam Chashma, in Chitral, Pakistan
Find out more about Rukshana’s work here.
