Words: Megan Rich

As principals, educators, parents, and guardians, we’re all asking ourselves, ‘How do we best prepare learners to succeed in this complex and fast-changing world?’

Although our present global challenges have forced our hands, limiting traditional classroom time through country-wide school closures, it is pushing us into a new and exciting era of blended learning. With schools under considerable pressure to achieve curriculum objectives in shrinking classroom time, this model’s strength lies in its inherent ability to deliver content in a flexible way. Through a combination of online and in-class learning, blended learning can assist schools with content delivery and give learners the opportunity to develop a range of 21st-century skills, and to become holistic individuals.

Life Skills, such as critical thinking, empathy, communication, collaboration and creativity, form part of a range of 21st-century skills that help build the foundations of understanding personal identity and potential as well as develop social skills. Through TLT’s Life Orientation lessons, workshops and mentorship programmes, we have helped schools deliver engaging leadership content. Now, we’re excited to delve into the world of e-learning and offer Life Orientation sessions to schools and individual learners. We want to help inspire and equip learners with the 21st-century skills vital to navigating a rapidly-changing world.

Our online Life Orientation sessions, led by a team of specialists, are engaging, thought-provoking and encourage participation. Here’s why our TLT sessions prove effective amongst young learners: 

• Young people are visually stimulated. Our content is delivered digitally, through video, animations and ‘facetime’, to help learners grasp the content in exciting ways.
• These sessions aren’t simply about teaching or lecturing but encourage conversation and questions to develop critical life skills, such as leadership abilities.
• The current challenges have forced our children into isolation; learners miss their friends. Online classes that encourage two-way participation help to carve out an online community of young people of the same age.
• As learners from different schools and communities learn digitally together, there is a potential to repair societal bridges and build lifelong friendships.
• These sessions don’t replace the school setting but instead offer students the opportunity to educate themselves in a different way, which also encourages time management.