For the academic year, 2020-2021 teachers and parents will be in a better position to face the new teaching modality which is currently being used to deliver instructions.
With the suspension of face to face interaction in the classroom due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education was forced to fast track the use of Google Classroom as the new method of delivering instructions.
As with many other novel initiatives, the use of the Google Classroom has not been met without challenges and skepticism from a wide cross-section of the public including parents and teachers. However, their fears are about to be laid to rest as the Ministry of Education will embark on a series of training sessions and workshops with parents and teachers as the biggest beneficiaries.
“The Ministry of Education promises to continue to conduct training sessions for parents on how to assist their children in their school and academic lives. We have recognized that just as some of our teachers are not internet savvy, we have a lot of parents who are not internet savvy too. Even in the real-world environment, we have cases where parents are not as astute in terms of assisting students. They are doing a good job with encouraging the students but they may not be able to do the work.
“We recognize that if parents are not internet savvy, this makes the experience a little more challenging. What we are doing is that we are working on exploring the possibility of having 5 minutes video clips, where we will be posting on the ministry’s website and we will make it available to the public so that parents can understand the basic use of technology in terms of use of the platform and how they can assist their students,” Dr. Blaize explained.
He continued, “As we speak, in July, subsequent to the closure of the school, we are going to host a series of training sessions on the Google platform for all our teachers and that is one of the things that we are looking forward to because we know that teachers are not going to travel during this summer so they are all going to be here with us so we will do the online training for them. Some teachers are not information technology savvy as we would have liked.
Making reference to the present situation, Dr. Blaize said that the training of teachers and the sourcing of resources for students and teachers are ongoing.
“The Ministry of Education has been working collaboratively with a number of sectors not only education but we also have health and telecommunications. We have embarked on a series of training programs for our teachers and as we speak, teachers are being trained. Prior to the closing of schools in March, we had already started our training.
“We had identified lead teachers at every school and those with sufficient knowledge of the platform were responsible to do the training at their various schools. So, all schools have a lead teacher who is engaged in the training of staff members. The Ministry of Education, from a central point of view, also does a lot of training for the teachers in the online platform.
“So in terms of building capacity, we are pretty much on the ball with that in terms of our training. As we have indicated, it is not perfect. It is a work in progress. COVID-19 taught us a lesson and we are working. We are making efforts to provide schools with devices for use by students and teachers. In this regard, we are working in collaboration with the United Nations International Cultural Education Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS),” he disclosed.