Loyse Vin­cent

An ed­u­ca­tion con­sul­tant is call­ing for the evo­lu­tion of teach­ing in this coun­try.

Kitts Cadette, a for­mer school prin­ci­pal, who al­so pi­lot­ed the de­vel­op­ment of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go, said: “Teach­ers can­not teach the way they did be­fore.”

She was speak­ing dur­ing the To­ba­go launch of the Methodists School’s De­vel­op­ment Project at the Food and Nu­tri­tion Co-op Build­ing in Canaan on yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Cadette, teach­ers must avail them­selves of new re­search, which speaks to the Neu­ro­science of learn­ing.

“Neu­rol­o­gists tell us that the anato­my of chil­dren’s brains is af­fect­ed by con­stant in­ter­fac­ing with screen tech­nol­o­gy,” she said.

She said teach­ers can no longer think of them­selves as the “sage of the stage” or the “gu­ru of all knowl­edge” be­cause they are now com­pet­ing with Google, in­ter­ac­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al soft­ware and so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

“We must in­clude what has be­come a nat­ur­al tool for stu­dents in the ex­e­cu­tion of our lessons. We must teach as they learn,” she said.

Cadette said the trans­for­ma­tion of the Methodist school sys­tem goes be­yond the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of im­me­di­ate teach­ers and prin­ci­pals.

“The church cler­gy must see the school as our schools as our col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Re­tired teach­ers your help is crit­i­cal­ly need­ed to help stu­dents who need spe­cial at­ten­tion.”

Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Labour Marslyn Melville Jack con­grat­u­lat­ed the Methodist Church for pi­lot­ing the project.

“I want to con­grat­u­late the church in tak­ing steps to di­ag­nose the chal­lenges which are ev­i­dent in the present sys­tem and to seek pro­fes­sion­al as­sis­tance in holis­ti­cal­ly rem­e­dy­ing the mal­adies that cur­rent­ly ex­ists,” Melville Jack said.

She too called on church­es to pay a more ac­tive role in in­still­ing val­ues in chil­dren. She ques­tioned if the church has “ab­di­cat­ed its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing in­cul­ca­tion of Chris­t­ian val­ues in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”

The Methodists School’s De­vel­op­ment Project will en­tail an au­dit of the Methodist schools through­out the re­gion to eval­u­ate de­mo­graph­ics, pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, class­room prac­tice, stu­dent wel­fare, school/church con­nec­tion, cli­mate and cul­ture and per­son­al re­flec­tion.

There will al­so be a se­ries of re­treats and train­ing ses­sions for teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and board mem­bers fo­cussed on sev­er­al ar­eas in­clud­ing build­ing ef­fec­tive teams, em­ploy­ing new re­search-based ap­proach­es to teach fa­mil­iar top­ics and dif­fer­en­ti­ate in­struc­tion to meet the needs of all stu­dent.