Dilrabo Akhmadalieva
Being open is about being able to admit your mistakes, ask your colleagues for help, and to learn how to avoid mistakes in the future. This is the wisdom that Dilrabo Akhmadalieva, an educator in Andijan, gained from her experiences in British Council programmes.
Dilrabo first participated in a British Council programme in 2008. As an English teacher at Andijan State University, she was invited to participate in the Development for Uzbekistan English Teachers (DUET) programme, which was intended to help teachers at Uzbek language universities to master modern teaching methods. For Dilrabo, the experience was about more than learning how to be a better teacher.
"The project gave me a lot. First, I fell in love with my profession all over again. It happened the way that my participation in DUET coincided with my return to work after two-year maternity leave. At the same time, I felt I was missing something, that everyone around me knew more than me. And DUET gave me the opportunity to work on myself, which I really needed,” she explained.
During the programme, Dilrabo was inspired by the Uzbek trainers enlisted by the British Council to help teach the courses, as well as by the foreign experts, such as Rod Bolaito, a world-renowned consultant in the field of English language instruction. Dilrabo and her colleagues were able to remain in touch with their instructors after the DUET programme concluded in an internet group where they could seek advice from their fellow teachers and former instructors.
“Participating in the British Council programme helped my professional development. After my first two-week training session, I already felt I had learned how to communicate with colleagues and to seek their advice and comments. I was learning to be more open and, as it turns out, this is necessary for success,” Dilrabo recalled.
These discoveries were reinforced over the years as Dilrabo participated in further British Council projects. Today, Dilrabo is proud to say that she loves reading English fiction and recommends her favourite books to her students. She is respected by her colleagues as an authority on the best methods for teaching English.
Dilrabo is a modest person, and she understands that her authority as a teacher depends on her success in helping students to love the material they are learning.
"If earlier in the classroom we mainly read the text and translated, then through the trainings of the British Council that I learned to make the lessons interactive. The aim is not telling everything myself, but at developing students' thinking, giving them a chance to achieve something on their own, for example, disclose the same rules. The training taught me that it is essential to be more friendly to students, not treat them as subordinates, but to communicate and support their research spirit,” Dilrabo explained.
“It is much more of a partnership—similar to what we had with the trainers and experts of the British Council in the course of our training,” she added.
This idea of a partnership existing between teachers and their students also applies in the assessment of whether students are gaining skills. Dilrabo explained that in the past, assessments were mainly focused on “the number of mistakes made by the student,” but today each of the skills, such as reading, writing, and speaking, is assessed according to its own criteria. “The teacher should not be the only one with knowledge and understanding of these criteria—students should also know about them. Such openness serves as another incentive for them,” Dilroba observed.
As the British Council marks its 25th anniversary of operations in Uzbekistan, Dilrabo is keen to express her gratitude to the organisation. “I wish prosperity at all levels so that the British Council will continue to be a very close partner of the higher and secondary education systems in the Republic of Uzbekistan,” she said.