Gujarat’s Northstar School and Switzerland’s HEP University of Teacher Education mark 5th year of collaboration to bring culturally-diverse global educators to India

Rajkot : Pioneering progressive learning institution The Northstar School and Switzerland’s HEP University of Teacher Education are celebrating the 5th year of their academic collaboration. Northstar and HEP commenced this partnership in 2019, with an aim to introduce global educators to the Indian education landscape, and foster education programs focused on intercultural skills and cross-curricular teaching and learning.

HEP University of Teacher Education is a globally-renowned institution for teachers’ professional training. Providing training for primary and secondary level education, its mission is to create strong synergies between teaching, consulting, and research. HEP intends to encourage innovation and promote a superior quality of education across the world, for which it runs various cross-curricular teaching programs for trained educators. The Northstar School is amongst the few institutions from India which closely work with HEP to facilitate these programs.

Under the 5th year of this collaboration, Northstar is hosting 16 HEP educators from Lausanne in Switzerland in its Rajkot campus for a period of 2 weeks. During this period, the educators are engaging with learners in unique educational experiences, providing a rich blend of learning experiences on topics such as global biodiversity, indigenous games and crafts, digital citizenship, tourism, etc. These broad and deep topics have been co-developed over many weeks of collaborations between Northstar educators and Swiss educators, to create experiential learning design that is being currently implemented at the Northstar’s main campus in Rajkot. These learning experiences are planned according to the themes for each grade leading to valuable intercultural experiences for students.

Speaking about the collaboration, Mohit Patel, Founder, The Northstar School says, “We consider ourselves fortunate to partake in this remarkable ongoing collaboration. We have worked very closely with our colleagues at HEP, Ruth Benvegnen and Lucy Kottsieper in particular, to develop an incredible academic and cultural program. It is aligned with our dedication to providing progressive learning experiences, underscoring our commitment to the holistic development and well-being of our students. Northstar’s goal is to provide truly international education, with students and educators both having meaningful exposure to global perspectives.”