Educators from 22 schools benefiting from Teach the Teachers

TEACHERS FROM 22 schools at various levels of the education system from St Ann are completing the Great Shape! Inc’s Teach the Teachers programme, currently under way at the Ocho Rios High School.

Brad Adams, founder and one of the co-directors of the Teach the Teachers programme, told The Gleaner on Saturday that teachers from 22 schools are attending the three-week programme which concludes this week.

“We provided 2,130 continuing education units to Jamaican teachers,” Adams said.

Teach the Teachers, which is supported by the Ministry of Education and Sandals Resorts, is geared at sharing teaching concepts to aid education professionals in improving their teaching methods, and after last year’s successful stint at Godfrey Stewart High School in Savanna-la-Mar, the programme is back in St Ann and has been impacting dozens of teachers from the parish.

The team conducting the programme is made up of volunteers mainly from the United States, but also from Canada and Jamaica. Subject areas being targeted include mathematics, language arts, science, information technology (IT), and behavioural management, from basic to secondary levels.

Adams said the team has been visiting Jamaica since 2011 and has been getting positive results. This year, over 100 teachers signed up to participate in the sessions.

Great Shape! Inc team members Kait Fairchild, co-director, Teach the Teachers, and Georgene Crowe, director of logistics and administration, agree that the programme, which is only conducted in Jamaica, serves a good purpose.

“Teach the Teachers is really focused on sharing information, knowledge, practical skills, and applications between cultures because we learn from the Jamaican teachers that attend, and then we have something to share with them that they can take into their classroom and implement right away,” Fairchild said.

And according to Crowe: “Everything is good about it, the interaction between Jamaican teachers and our volunteers, everybody learns from each other. And it’s great for people from other countries to see how Jamaican teachers teach and the conditions they teach under.”