Teachers urged to pass on knowledge from summer institute workshop

Teachers who participated in the two-week summer institute workshop have been encouraged to pass on what they learned at the beginning of the school year in September.

Speaking at the closing ceremony at the Peace Memorial Hall last Friday, president of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Teacher’s Union (SVGTU) Oswald Robinson told teachers that the workshop experience is worthwhile.{{more}}

He added, “You are accountable to pass on the information that you would have gained; I expect my colleague principals to be receptive.”

Robinson said that learning is continuous and commended the principals who took part in the workshop.

“We have to keep abreast of the new knowledge, because knowledge is dynamic, so that we’d be in a better position to execute that part of our responsibility that deals with instructional leadership.”

Robinson described the workshop, which is the collaborative effort of the SVGTU, the Canadian Teacher’s Federation (CTF), the Ministry of Education and the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF), as another manifestation of the commitment of the SVGTU to student learning.

“Whereas we may have some little battles to fight with the authorities here and there, we have been doing our part to ensure that we professionalize the teaching profession.”

The union president said that although young teachers may enter the union thinking it is only about salary related fights, it is also to help teachers to grow professionally in order to deliver quality teaching.

He added that the responsibility of teaching is one that teachers must embrace wholeheartedly.

“If you enjoy an environment that is safe and healthy and you have the resources, you just have to do your best; execute all the strategies that you have learnt here and as you use them, you’re going to develop, you’re going to grow and you’d be able to pass on that which is valuable to our students,” he encouraged the teachers.

During his remarks, CTF team leader Allan Kwok said that his team was bursting with pride at having had the opportunity to take part in this year’s workshop.

“As educators, we work with and for our students; our challenges as a set are universal,” he said.

Kwok said that the teachers showed a commitment to improve their practice in the classroom by collecting new ideas and learning new strategies.

“You will now assess better, you will differentiate better, you will teach better and you will be better,” he added.

According to Kwok, teachers who attended the workshop would be better than they were in the last school year and acknowledged the hard work done by both co-tutors of the SVGTU and the CTF.

“The partnership was strong productive and mutually beneficial,” he added.

BNTF representative Kenneth Douglas said that over the past four years, the BNTF, the SVGTU and Ministry of Education have partnered to get the early childhood education component of the workshop going.

“We are very proud of our association and we are extremely proud that what has taken place in the classroom have been manifested in the various pre-schools across the country” he said.(AS)