Recover smarter: Ministry to offer capacity building opportunities for educators
Published:Wednesday | June 30, 2021 | 12:12 AM
In preparation for the 2021-2022 academic year, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, through the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC), will offer capacity building opportunities for school personnel during the 2021 summer period.
This was disclosed in a bulletin issued by the ministry recently. Under the theme ‘Recover Smarter’, the ministry aims to support and bolster the readiness of teachers to assess learning gaps, recover learning loss among students, and improve the social and emotional well-being of all stakeholders via robust psychosocial support.
The bulletin outlined a suite of professional development opportunities that has been developed. The first course, starting in July, is the ‘Interventions for Recovery in Education (IRiE)’. This course has been designed to support schools in developing and implementing interventions as well as to organise the school and classroom for learning to address learning loss experienced by students.
PROGRAMME’S AIM
A Psychosocial Programme for the reopening of schools, which is described as ‘The Return to Happiness (RTH)’ course for teachers, will also be offered. It supports the Education in Emergencies Framework and aims to prepare and empower teachers with the skills and resources to treat with emotional challenges and to provide psychosocial support to students.
The final course in July is the ‘TECH-ing it to New Levels with G-Suite for Education’. This course exposes teachers to the range of apps and services in G-Suite for Education.
Starting in August, participants will be exposed to two courses – Teaching in a Hybrid Classroom and Teaching in a Socially Distanced Classroom. These have been developed to help teachers make modifications to their instructions to accommodate the realities of face-to-face classes in September 2021.
The two-month-long training session will culminate with the ‘Teacher Empowerment Webinar Series’, developed to offer psychosocial health and wellness support and address concerns and anxieties that teachers may have as they prepare to return to face-to-face classes.