Liliya Samigullina-Caserta and Sandra Balkema from Ferris State University, USA became moderators of the VIII International School Teachers’ Festival.

L.Samigullina-Caserta. Professor Dweck’s “incremental” theory of intelligence (growth mindset) is based on a positive attitude towards your own ignorance, an ability to admit your mistakes and readiness to improve and correct mistakes. For example, if my student says he doesn’t know punctuation rules, I don’t start telling him how it’s important to know these rules. I ask him if he has looked for the information he needs and what he has done to learn the rules. Thus, the student is involved into an active learning process which stops a teacher from teaching and enables both a teacher and student get involved into the collaboration. According to this method, every student’s motto is, “Today I am going to learn something new. It’s not going to be easy but it’s important”.

Sandra Balkema: My teaching philosophy is based on active learning. During my workshop I am going to share the method of active learning, the so-called “flipped” classroom where both students and their teacher are equal partners. I don’t like a traditional way of teaching – “listen and remember” method. In my classroom I use discussions and critical comments of my students to each other. I hope this method will be found interesting by teachers of different school subjects.