Qatar Museums organises Teachers Council

Qatar Museums (QM) Chairperson H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani yesterday urged teachers to engage more closely with QM through its various educational programmes catered to students and teachers.

Sheikha Al Mayassa was speaking before 200 teachers from various schools across Qatar at the first ever Teachers Council event organised by QM yesterday at the Museum of Islamic Art Auditorium.

“At Qatar Museums, we are committed to providing learning opportunities and resources for everyone in Qatar, including teachers, which enhances the art and culture they encounter and enables them to pass their learnings on tomorrow’s creative generation,” she said.

She listened to feedback and answered questions from the teachers at the highly engaging discussion during which she stressed the importance of working closely to provide learners the myriad resources and experiences offered by the organisation.

“It is vital that we continue to hold events like this, as feedback that we receive from teachers will enable us to continuously improve and evolve our educational offerings across QM to enrich lives, broaden horizons and stimulate the creativity within the community. We are delighted with today’s turnout and look forward to holding more events like this one in the future,” she added.

“The museums are here for art educators but also for non-art educators; so if you are a teacher in Math, Science, History or Geography, there’s really something for you here and we would like to work with you in order to maximise the output for your students prior to their visits,” she explained.

The two-hour long discussion generated a number of suggestions from teachers on how schools can foster close collaboration with QM in enhancing their curricula by availing of the plenty of opportunities and resource QM offers which can be integrated across various disciplines. Among the teachers’ proposals were offering QM programmes in different languages, providing exhibition space to enable students to celebrate their works and organising field trips to Qatar’s rich archaeological sites.

Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Museums and Advisor to H E the Chairperson and Fatma Al Rumaihi, Chief Executive Officer of the Doha Film Institute also spoke at the event.

The teachers were also given an informative tour of the galleries at MIA and were shown a demonstration of QM’s object-based teaching. They were also provided an opportunity to visit the museum’s Education Center, the Library and several other areas.