A letter to colleagues

Recently I wrote an email to an SEL educator who visited Trinidad and Tobago to develop SEL in our schools here. I am sharing much of what I said in the email in the hope that it would help others to understand some of what I see as the factors involved in implementing SEL in our schools. I feel strongly that in order for these programmes to be effective we must get at the root of the issues affecting our students, teachers, administrators and parents and everyone else who wants to be involved in changing our school systems.

Some of the problems as I see them:

1.I believe a core problem is the hiring and training of teachers. Just about any one can enter the teaching service here. They do not have to have any training in education or teaching. Many go straight from high school into teaching. I don't have to detail for you what problems that causes. Many go in for the wrong reasons- they cant get any other job, they want the holidays with their children so they wont have to worry about what to do with them, some are waiting for *real* jobs or to go to university, etc.

2.The physical conditions alone cause emotional and social ill-health. Classrooms in many primary schools consist of a small space divided by blackboards to accommodate two or three or four classes. Students sit three or four to a small wooden bench with nowhere to put their bags except next to them or behind their backs. Classrooms are poorly ventilated; parents have been asked to raise funds to purchase a fan for the classroom. The common cry of many teachers now is that the noise level in the school is too much for them to cope with. Early childhood educators scoff at the notion of setting up work-stations or play-stations in their classrooms.

3.It is important for anyone wanting to work with and support teachers to understand the effect that the Common entrance exam (now called SEA), and the CXC exams, and the system of prestige school versus non-prestige school have had on everyone who has been through it. The political games that have been played especially in the past 10 years with teachers and students are horrendous.

4.Our internalised oppression as caribbean (we hate the term third world) people has as one of its effects the divide among us and the difficulty we have in working together and supporting each other. We have a saying here that people believe anything foreign is better than our own. So we have a number of efforts to improve things in our schools, but we are still struggling to collaborate and notice that we are all working toward a single goal and therefore bring our efforts together, which of course will make it much more effective and have greater impact.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic