An Indian-American professor, Rajani Ganesh Pillai, who works as an assistant professor of marketing at North Dakota State Univeristy, has won the prestigious Peltier Award for innovation in teaching. She uses a game called “Baffa Baffa” to teach her students about the role culture plays in business and how it can affect transactions and relationships. She was recognised as she strove to bring hands-on experience, theory-based understanding and a global perspective to her students.
The world’s best teacherNancie Atwell teaches in a school in the rural town of Edgecomb, Maine. But in her school, all classrooms have libraries, standardised tests are forbidden, classes are small, every religious and cultural holiday is celebrated, and students pick the topics they write about and the books they read. Last month, Atwell emerged the winner of a competition that aimed to find the world’s best teacher. At the award ceremony in Dubai, she accepted the Global Teacher Prize. She dedicated the entire award, worth $1million, to the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), a non-profit demonstration school she founded 25 years ago, which she said is in need of structural upgrades, including a new roof and many more books.
Provisions for special needsThe provisions for children with special needs in England has been “drastically damaged", according to the leader of a teacher’s union there. Many schools and colleges are unable to meet their obligations for pupils with disabilities. The government had introduced certain changes in September, 2014 with the aim of giving children and young people with special educational needs, and their parents, a greater say in the support they receive.
