Little Teachers
TURNING THE TABLES ///
The current paradigm is that education should be transmitted from adults to children - a one-way transfer of knowledge. What if we turned the tables and gave children the chance to trade places with teachers?
Little Teachers sets up a line of desks and has children sit at them - in the teacher’s spot. Adults are invited to come and sit on the pupil’s bench and learn something new: a few words in a foreign language, tips and tricks for drawing action figures, a useful mnemonic jingle, fun facts about a particular sport, animal, country, instrument…
Soon both children and adults find themselves opening up to an inspiring experience: the young teachers transmit their passions while the grownups step outside of their usual system of interaction with kids.
In a safe environment, Little Teachers enables exchange outside of the children's usual circle and shows them that they too can participate in the wider world. The children take pride in communicating their knowledge to strangers on the other side of the desk. They see that though they may be young, they too can contribute and they too can make a difference. An adult would say : This project empowers children to become agents of change.
Little Teachers is a highly inclusive initiative open to children of all backgrounds and abilities, encouraging cross-generational exchange in a respectful and non-competitive environment.
We successfully prototyped this project in June 2018 for the 50th anniversary of Enfants du Monde.