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Our Prior Results

As the longest-standing nonprofit organization working to improve teaching abilities in Toledo, TFABB fills a crucial training need that the Belizean government cannot yet fully meet. And because we are all volunteers, with no office or staff expenses, all donations and funds have gone straight to the projects in Belize.

Over the last 13 years we believe we have reached more than 850 teachers, now affecting 6,500 to 7,000 children every year. To help get kids reading and writing, we’ve needed to get a lot of books into their hands. We’ve purchased & donated over $200,000 worth of books and teaching supplies as well as an estimated 15,000 used books & supplies collected through book drives in the US.

Each of the 50 primary schools in the Toledo district now has a sizeable book collection thanks to TFABB. And during 2006-09 we trained and fostered 28 local teachers as trainers for their peers, to co-present with visiting North American trainers and to lead trainings on their own.

Our model to hold summer workshops and to train local teachers as trainers has been so successful that the 5 other districts in Belize are now replicating it (through a joint program involving Canadian Rotary Clubs, Teachers’ Unions and the Belizean government).

1) Teacher-Training Workshops: (1997-Present)

2) Donating School Supplies and Books (1997-Present)
3) Model-School Program (2009-Present)
4) School-Related Construction (2003-2006)


Teacher-Training Workshops: (1997-Present)

TFABB has provided training workshops for various groups of Toledo educators every year since 1997, including: primary-school teachers, preschool teachers, and primary-school principals.

 

Workshops for primary-school teachers: 1997-2009

TFABB’s original work centered around one-week summer training workshops for Toledo’s primary-school (or K-8) teachers. More than 60 percent of Toledo’s teachers are not trained; many begin their teaching careers when the graduate from high school at age eighteen. From a modest beginning in 1997 training 20 teachers, TFABB’s August teacher-training workshops continued to grow and reached a record 278 participants in the summer of 2008.

The annual August workshop took place in the village of Big Falls from 1997-2004, and then moved to the town of Punta Gorda from 2006-2009. In the early years in Big Falls, TFABB provided training in language arts, math, science and other primary-school subjects. At the suggestion of Toledo’s teachers, when the workshop moved to Punta Gorda in 2006, TFABB began to focus its workshops solely on language arts. The teachers and TFABB agreed that solidifying their students’ grasp of language arts was the highest priority in a district where every child speaks a language other than English at home. (All schooling in Belize is in English.)

When TFABB first began its work in 1997, Toledo’s teachers had no other professional development opportunities available in their district. There were no training workshops much less full-time study opportunities in Toledo beyond high school. The teachers and the administrative officials came to see the TFABB summer workshop as the main training event for the teachers each year, and TFABB came to work closely with the Ministry of Education, local supervisors, and principals to plan the workshop every August. Indeed, in 2000 Belize’s Permanent Secretary of Education made a rare trip from the capital to Toledo to observe the workshop and proclaimed it a model for the other five regions of Belize.

 

Training Local Teachers at Trainers: 2006-2009

In July 2006, TFABB began a three-year pilot program aiming to formalize its team approach and to solidify a core of local trainers, called "Literacy Coaches." This project ended in August 2009, by which point 28 Toledo teachers had taken part in the program and become TFABB Literacy Coaches. This project marked the first model in Belize of training local teachers as trainers and also of providing one-day, follow-up training sessions during the school year.

Generally speaking, this effort aimed to widen and deepen educational leadership and training ability in the Toledo district of Belize with the goal of further enhancing teacher knowledge and skills—and thus student success—district-wide. More specifically, the three-year program to foster local literacy coaches had two main goals:

  1. Increasing the sustainability of TFABB’s teacher-training efforts in the district by building up a core group of experienced, local trainers (thereby lessening the need over time for visiting trainers); and
  2. Increasing the reach and impact of TFABB’s teacher-training efforts by providing support to Toledo’s teachers over the course of the year—beyond TFABB’s traditional five-day summer workshop (thereby increasing the number of training days and the year-round accountability of individual teachers in implementing the new material).

The annual activities of the three-year program included:

  1. A July training workshop for the literacy coaches led by North American volunteer trainers;
  2. The annual, week-long August training workshop for Toledo’s other 280 primary-school teachers led by the literacy coaches partnered with North American volunteer trainers; and
  3. Two to three one-day, follow-up trainings during the school year led by the local literacy coaches for the 280 other teachers in Toledo.

The 28 individuals who served in the TFABB literacy-coaching program during the three-year project now form a resource pool of well-practiced trainers for the Toledo district. The coaches had the opportunity to lead and co-lead many training sessions, during both the two to three in-service days each year and during the five-day TFABB summer workshops. They led or co-led anywhere from 7 to 22 days of training, again depending on the number of years they served in the program. Indeed, the Ministry of Education’s district representative indicated during discussions in 2009 that he was looking forward to calling upon these well-prepared individuals to help meet the district’s training needs for many years to come. This three-year program marked the first-time that TFABB organized trainings that were fully led by Belizeans. Because our North American volunteers did not have to travel to be involved in every training, TFABB was able to put on trainings for less cost.


TFABB’s in-service days offered a professional development opportunity that was unprecedented in Toledo; the three training days held during the 2006-07 school year marked the very first time that all teachers in the district gathered for training sessions during the school year. With seven in-service trainings held over the three-year program, TFABB’s local coaches increased TFABB’s training days by nearly 50 percent over TFABB’s pre-2006 totals (from five days per year up to seven or eight days a year). The in-service days provided invaluable time for teachers to check in, share, and troubleshoot while they were in the thick of the school year. The increase in training days also heightened a culture and an expectation of professional growth in the local teaching profession.


The Toledo district saw language arts scores improve during the Literacy Coach project period. The small percentage of Belizean children who want to go to high school take the Primary School Exam (PSE). Toledo traditionally scores fifth or sixth of the six districts and several percentage points below the national average. This scenario held true in language arts scores for the three years before TFABB began the coaches’ program. In May 2008—two years into our literacy coaches’ program—Toledo nearly matched the national average and came in fourth out of six for language arts. A first!! Also, Toledo’s language arts scores were higher than the district’s math score, which is unusual in a district of second-language learners. The Ministry and other local managers made much ado of these gains when they spoke at various TFABB training events over the following year. Toledo is usually seen as the "hopeless" district by officials in the capital, some of whom have never visited the district’s rural schools because of the difficult travel logistics (e.g., lack of roads). Because they usually feel like the forgotten district, it is easy to understand why Toledo’s educators take such pride in moving up to fourth place for the first time. It is hard to say that TFABB’s programs in Toledo could claim all of the honors for this exciting improvement, but the new mix of using local trainers, adding more training days, and focusing solely on language arts since 2006 certainly did not hurt.

Read more about the successes of the program to train local teachers as trainers for their peers.

 

Handing Off Responsibility to Local Government: 2010-Present

TFABB has always been committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of its programs by fostering the involvement of local educators and managers, and by "handing off" program components when local capacity allows. In keeping with TFABB’s efforts to encourage the Ministry to take more ownership of training events in Toledo, TFABB and the local Ministry office equally split the responsibilities of the 2009 August training workshop. TFABB provided the trainers and all of the logistical support for the lower primary grades (K-2), while the Ministry provided the trainers for the middle and upper primary grades (3-8).

Confident that the local Ministry had developed the capacity to run the summer training workshop for Toledo’s primary-school teachers–alongside the numerous other training opportunities that have become available for these teachers in recent years–in 2010 TFABB completely handed off to the local Ministry office the responsibility for the annual August workshop for Toledo’s primary-school teachers. We had worked ourselves out of a job in this one aspect of our work by helping to foster local capacity, a feat which is the goal of every foreign nonprofit working in a developing country.

As mentioned, when TFABB began its efforts in 1997, no other teacher-training workshops or opportunities existed in the district. In the last five years or so, other training opportunities have arisen for Toledo’s teachers. The University of Belize opened a branch campus in Toledo, allowing several teachers each year to receive teacher training through night courses. Also, a large Canadian Teachers’ Union and Rotary program has partnered with the national government of Belize to offer ongoing training in all six districts of Belize, including Toledo. This program adopted TFABB’s summer workshop model, along with TFABB’s model to train local Belizean teachers as trainers for their peers. This large Canadian program is not only replicating and spreading TFABB’s "coaching" model, but it is also using many of TFABB’s trained literacy coaches as trainers in its Toledo summer programs. TFABB’s original pool of 28 literacy coaches continues to hone and spread their skills in various venues and to serve as professional role models in their district!

Solid summer training workshops are still important in a country where only 45 percent of all K-8 teachers have completed formal training beyond high school. We are thrilled that a larger Government-supported program can now bring the TFABB model of using local trainers for summer workshops to the rest of Belize, while TFABB continues to focus in a more intense way in several rural schools in Toledo. It is important for TFABB to continue and deepen this focus because Toledo’s rural schools continue to face the greatest obstacles when compared to the rest of the country. For example, only 32 percent of Toledo’s rural teachers have completed formal training beyond high school.

 

TFABB’s Ongoing Teacher-Training Workshops

While there are now plenty of local training opportunities for Toledo’s primary-school teachers, there are still at least two groups of Toledo educators whose training needs are still not being met locally. TFABB will continue providing training workshops for all of Toledo’s preschool teachers and primary-school principals until these need can be met locally.

 

Training Preschool Teachers: 1997-Present

For most of TFABB’s thirteen-year existence, the Toledo region where TFABB works has not had preschools in the rural areas. Lack of access to preschool plays a role in the many obstacles facing Toledo’s older children, including their struggles to learn English, keep up with their national counterparts in testing, and indeed avoid dropping out of primary school altogether due to frequent repeating of grades.

In the last four years, the Belizean government has made a concerted push to bring preschool to all children, including a new national preschool curriculum. The number of preschools in Toledo has jumped from three to 22, with a plan to add several more each year. We are optimistic that each of the district’s 40 villages will one day have a preschool to help prepare their children for success in primary school and beyond.

As TFABB has long seen the need for preschool in Toledo’s rural areas, we were eager to begin working with the growing population of preschool teachers. In 2007, we added preschool training to our week-long August workshop. This summer workshop continued from 2008-2010, and will likely continue in 2011.

 

Training Primary-School Principals:

2005-2006: In August 2006, TFABB and the University of Belize completed a year-long training program for over 40 of Toledo’s 49 primary-school principals. This represented the first formal principal training for the majority of these individuals, many of whom also teach full time. Three-day workshops took place in August and December 2005 as well as April and August 2006. TFABB provided funding and some on-site training support.

The training program for new principals outlined the basic roles of a principal and covered the needed skills for community relations, recordkeeping, budgeting, report preparation, supervision, and facility maintenance.

While the training for new principals might be considered an introduction to the "nuts and bolts" of being a principal, the program for experienced principals encouraged these educators to formulate a grander vision for ongoing quality improvement in their schools. They developed a strategic plan for student success and learned how to mobilize school and community support behind that vision.

2009-2010: In 2009 and 2010, TFABB also added principal training to its week-long August workshop activities. TFABB is coordinating this annual principal workshop with a national program led by a large Canadian Teachers’ Union and Rotary program; however, TFABB is providing all trainers and organizing all logistics for the principal workshop in the Toledo district. The 2009 workshop included not only Toledo’s 50 primary-school principals, but also the 35 principals from the neighboring Stann Creek district. This marked the first time that TFABB formally hosted educators from another district at one of its training workshops.

TFABB’s principal trainers have also made several trips to Toledo during the last two school years to lead one-day, follow-up trainings for Toledo’s principals once each semester.


Donating Supplies and Books: (1997-Present)


Boxes of donated books to be distributed.

Back in 1997, when we held our first training workshop, lack of supplies, paper, and teaching materials was a big obstacle for the teachers we worked with. This was an ongoing source of frustration to everyone, and was primarily the result of insufficient funds.

Providing the necessary teaching supplies and educational books to support the skills developed in the annual teacher-training workshops has been an important part of TFABB's mission. Since inception, we have purchased and donated over $100,000 worth of requested teaching supplies, materials, and books to the schools of Toledo. The true value of the books and supplies we have purchased over the last 13 years has really been at least $200,000, since we have generally received a 50 percent discount on all of our purchases. Additionally, we have shipped many hundreds of boxes of donated supplies and books gathered in school book drives (books gathered from teachers and others in St. Louis, Buffalo, Houston, Shelbyville, TN, and many other places). We estimate that we have sent over 15,000 used books.


Model-School Program: (2009-Present)

Based on a five-week evaluation and program design effort that a volunteer consultant carried out for TFABB in the summer of 2008, in 2009 TFABB began a new six-year program in partnership with the Peace Corps. TFABB’s new model-school program includes more direct, year-round language arts support to teachers in several under-resourced schools and introduces initiatives to increase awareness about early childhood education in those villages. TFABB supports Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) who live and work in each of the villages. TFABB is also providing each school with many relevant books and literacy resources. TFABB now considers its model-school program its central program. The following list outlines the main activities in this new program from its conceptualization in 2008 through the end of the 2009/2010 school year:

Quick Results!

Over the first year of the program (2009/2010), reading levels improved in both schools. (The third school was added at end of school year, so testing had not taken place there yet.) In Silver Creek, for example, 57 of 118 children began the year reading below grade level. By May, only 9 of 115 kids were reading below grade level. Some children improved by three grade levels! Both schools also had a record high score on the high school entrance exam, which is administered in April. This means that an individual in each school scored higher than any other individual had ever scored in that school.

Read more about the early successes of the model-school program.


School-Related Construction: (2003-2006)

2003: Blue Creek Teachers’ House

TFABB undertook its first school-related construction project in the summer of 2003, when 31 North American volunteers traveled to Toledo to build a teachers’ house in rural Blue Creek village. The new house allows teachers posted in Blue Creek to focus on teaching and becoming part of the community, rather than a long and arduous hitchhiking commute from the town of Punta Gorda where they live.

2005-06: Santa Cruz Community Library

Fifteen U.S. volunteers spent their 2005 winter holidays in Santa Cruz, Belize, mixing mortar, sawing rebar, and laying cement blocks to help build a library for use by community members and the village’s primary school. Santa Cruz is a small village of 430 people in a remote part of Toledo, Belize’s poorest district and home to the majority of the country’s indigenous Mayan population. [Read about the volunteer experience]


TFABB volunteers helped build a Library in Santa Cruz during 2006 New Year's holiday!
The U.S. volunteers worked alongside 35 Mayan community members, who donated their time not only that week but also for several weeks before and after to lay the foundation and finish the roof. Such village involvement was especially heartening in a community that suffered from long-standing mistrust between the villagers and school personnel. A new principal, a Peace Corps volunteer, and community leaders worked hard over the prior year to rebuild trust and to unite everyone behind the project.

Increased access to education is crucial in the Toledo district, where less than one-quarter percent of children attend high school, 52 percent of the Mayan population is illiterate, and 56 percent of the population is indigent. Before this project, no child from Santa Cruz had ever graduated from high school. TFABB and the local Belizean education authorities are confident that the library—along with the newly rekindled community involvement in and excitement about the school—will play a key role in increasing the number of children in Santa Cruz who finish primary school and go to high school.

Former TFABB Board member Karen Cueni-Tillet and her Belizean husband Karl Tillet led the group. The U.S. volunteers ranged in age from 14 to 78 and traveled from Texas, Washington, California, Florida, South Carolina, and Indiana. One enthusiastic volunteer, Larry Cruse, raised an extra $1,800 when he returned to the U.S., allowing the villagers to build a concrete roof on the library so that it can also serve as the village’s hurricane shelter.


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