The spot­light was placed on merg­ing ed­u­ca­tion and the en­vi­ron­ment, as over 30 teach­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion for the 2023 bpTT Schools’ En­vi­ron­men­tal Aware­ness Com­pe­ti­tion host­ed at the Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre two Fri­days ago.

First-time par­tic­i­pant Meli­na Bur­nett, Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture teacher of Matelot Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, said the out­come was pos­i­tive.

“From the out­line pro­vid­ed to­day, this com­pe­ti­tion will pro­vide stu­dents with a high lev­el of re­al-world ex­po­sure. It al­so re­in­forces the work be­ing done in school, while en­cour­ag­ing self-ex­pres­sion and cre­ativ­i­ty. As coastal com­mu­ni­ties, we are all heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on and im­pact­ed by the en­vi­ron­ment. Our stu­dents will be chal­lenged to ex­cel and em­pow­ered to make a pos­i­tive change as en­vi­ron­men­tal am­bas­sadors,” Bur­nett said, via a state­ment from Bench­mark Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Now in its 17th year, the com­pe­ti­tion is en­dorsed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and ad­min­is­tered by Ma­yaro-based non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, The Black Deer Foun­da­tion, with sup­port from en­er­gy com­pa­ny bp T&T (bpTT).

Wel­com­ing teach­ers to the ses­sion was Matthew Pierre, com­mu­ni­ty li­ai­son of­fi­cer of bpTT, who said, “It’s great to see such ex­ten­sive teacher par­tic­i­pa­tion, and we look for­ward to the stu­dents feed­ing off your en­thu­si­asm and en­er­gy. Hav­ing de­vel­oped a sus­tain­abil­i­ty frame­work with spe­cif­ic aims, bpTT is fo­cused on get­ting to car­bon net ze­ro, car­ing for our plan­et and im­prov­ing peo­ples lives. By link­ing ed­u­ca­tion to the en­vi­ron­ment, this com­pe­ti­tion puts that pur­pose in­to ac­tion. We are proud to be a part of this long-stand­ing ini­tia­tive and look for­ward to the ex­cel­lence pro­duced by the stu­dents.”

Rep­re­sent­ing pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools from across the North East­ern and South East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­tricts, the teach­ers en­gaged in dis­cus­sions to fa­cil­i­tate un­der­stand­ing the re­quire­ments of the com­pe­ti­tion that will fo­cus on this years’ top­ic: ‘High­light­ing the im­pacts of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters on the Caribbean’.

En­gag­ing stu­dents be­tween the ages of sev­en and 18, par­tic­i­pants are ex­pect­ed to con­vey the var­i­ous facets of the theme in three cat­e­gories: Es­say Writ­ing, Art/Car­toon and De­bat­ing. Guid­ing the dis­cus­sions with teach­ers in these three cat­e­gories re­spec­tive­ly were Ce­celia George, re­tired School Su­per­vi­sor II; Vanis­sa Mo­hammed, art teacher; and Andy Paul, Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School prin­ci­pal.