Over forty local educators are being targeted at a two-day workshop which aims to enhance their knowledge and teaching techniques and to find more ways of helping students to develop a greater appreciation for Literature.
The workshop, which got underway on Monday, is one in a series conducted by the UWI, Cave Hill Campus School of Education. The first phase of the series began last year in St. Vincent and so far has been held in Barbados, Antigua and Barbudea, St. Lucia and Grenada.
Dominica is the first stop of the second phase and is being held was done in conjunction with the Caribbean Poetry Project (CPP), the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) and the Ministry of Education.
At an opening ceremony on Mongay Chief Education Officer, Steve Hyacinth, told participants to make the best use of the opportunity presented by the worksop.
“It is my hope that all of you teachers will make the best use of this workshop and that you will go back to your school and to your classroom with a burning desire and passion to try some if not all the new strategies and techniques that you will glean from this workshop,” he remarked.
Hyacinth urged them to spread the newly acquired knowledge to others.
“We urge you to share this knowledge and skills with your colleagues so that all of you can work cooperatively to ensure that your students develop a greater appreciation for literature. Let literature open a new world of experience for all our students,” he pointed out.
In related news Minister of Education Petter Saint Jean told teachers at the workshop that out dated techniques are no longer applicable and they must now be equipped with modern technology in the classroom.
“Traditional views of literacy once meant basic competence in reading and writing. Today we know that it is also about usage and comprehension skills in speaking, listening and viewing, and in a technologically advanced global environment it now means being able to communicate through a variety of media, including visual art, drama, and multimedia performances. As a teacher you must begin to consider how your teaching of poetry fits into this context and satisfies the new modern requirements of literacy development,” he noted.
The Caribbean poetry project (CPP) is funded by the Commonwealth Education Trust in collaboration with the University of the West Indies and Cambridge University.
Facilitators include, Samuel Soyer, Faculty member of the Department of Language, Linguistics, and literature at the UWI, Cave Hill, Dr. Phillip Nanton, a poet who has facilitated many creative writing workshops in the eastern Caribbean and Professor Mark Mcwatt, a poet and a former faculty member in the Department of Language, Linquistics and Literature at the UWI Cave Hill Campus.
An evening of poetry reading is expected to be part of the program and will take place at the UWI Open Campus on Monday evening at 6.
In so many of these articles, someone–in this case, Peter St. Jean–appears to conflate “literature” with “literacy.” The same occurs each year at the Nature Island Literary Festival, which someone must describe as a “literacy” festival instead. Sure, you need to be literate to read literature, but it’s a bit disturbing that the two are being mixed so often.
As far as “modern” techniques–well, these are useful, of course, but certainly not required for teaching students about books. Why would they be? The earliest English programs existed before such technologies did. You need, ultimately, to be an engaging teacher who loves the material he or she teaches and can convey that to the students, with or without modern technologies.
I really hope the English teachers from our secondary schools are well represented and taking notes of new techniques to assist students. To many times there is training for teachers and they do not attend but expect the students to have more interest and learn more….you cannot teach what you do not know.
Currently there!!
Yes. I can see you falling asleep in de back:-)