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2009/10 Program Plan

Our current program plan has three primary components: 1) Our annual August Teacher-Training Workshops; 2) Ongoing Literacy Coaches’ and In-Service Program; and 3) a new Model-School Coaching Program.

Program One: August Teacher-Training Workshops

TFABB is 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. Keeping with TFABB’s efforts to encourage the Ministry to take more ownership of training events in Toledo, the Ministry will take a bigger role in the summer workshops this year. TFABB will provide training for about half of the teachers while the Ministry will provide training for the other half. TFABB will provide language arts training for lower primary (essentially grades K-2), while the Ministry will provide training for middle and upper primary (essentially grades 3-8). TFABB’s local trainers ("literacy coaches") will serve as trainers for all of these levels. For lower primary the coaches will partner with North American trainers, and for the Ministry portions of the workshop, the TFABB coaches will serve as lead trainers (without North American partners).

TFABB will also organize a week-long workshop for the district’s 25 preschool teachers. The preschool and lower primary (K-2) workshops fit nicely together in working toward TFABB’s goal of strengthening literacy in the Toledo district. It is crucial to help children gain a solid foothold in language arts in the early grades, especially since many children in the district still do not have access to preschool and all Belizean children speak English as a second language. The lower-division teachers in Toledo are also usually the least experienced teachers in the district, so it is important that TFABB provide them with solid training led by U.S.-Belizean teams. In the dozen or so villages where preschool is available, teachers need a better understanding of how to help children develop pre-literacy skills. TFABB will provide books and supplies for all preschool and lower-primary teachers at the summer workshops.

TFABB will also provide five days of training during the summer workshop specifically for the district’s 50 principals, in conjunction with a Canadian Rotary program. This training session will also include the 35 principals from the neighboring Stann Creek district. This is the first time TFABB has hosted such a large group of educators from another district during one of its training programs. Principals will learn additional skills to bolster language arts success in their schools. TFABB coaches who are also principals will co-lead this workshop with TFABB’s North American volunteer principal trainers.

Program Two: Ongoing Literacy Coaches’ and In-Service Program

TFABB is committed to nurturing the momentum and success of the existing literacy coaches’ and in-service training program, while at the same time stepping back somewhat to allow Belizeans to drive the coordination and content of training events. In February 2009, TFABB met with the current coaches to explain the official closing of the first three-year phase of the coaches’ program (the pilot phase). TFABB is inviting the 28 current and former coaches to indicate their interest in joining an on-going "professional association" of literacy coaches, a pool from which both the Ministry and TFABB plan to call upon trainers for several years to come. TFABB and the Ministry are lining up the coaching team for the various subcomponents of the August training workshop (lower primary; middle and upper primary; principals). The literacy coaches, along with the Ministry, will also organize two in-service training days in the coming 2009-2010 school year, in October and February. The Ministry does not have the fiscal resources to run the in-service program. While the Ministry and coaches can provide the brain power and logistical organization for the in-service program, TFABB can continue to provide the monetary support for the in-services in the medium term to ensure that the coaches can continue to exercise their leadership in a district where teachers desperately need training. TFABB will continue to work with the Ministry in the years to come, especially during staff transitions times at the local Ministry office, to assure that future Ministry officials know about and continue to draw from this amazing local resource for the district–the literacy coaches.

TFABB plans to invite this pool of coaches to at least two get-togethers each year, perhaps over dinner, to foster community-building and momentum in this ongoing professional association. These get-togethers will provide a forum to check in generally and to talk about upcoming trainings. As this group of Toledo educators comprises some of the most highly trained and well-practiced educational leaders in the district, these fora can also be a time for the coaches to brainstorm not only about their future roles but also about solutions to some of the underlying obstacles to educational success in the district.

Program Three: Model-School Coaching Program

Based on a five-week evaluation and program design effort that a volunteer consultant carried out for TFABB in the summer of 2008, we will initiate a second yet new approach to our efforts to train local teachers as literacy coaches for their peers.

Beginning in June 2009, TFABB will begin a program to include more direct, year-round support to teachers in six under-resourced schools and to introduce initiatives to increase awareness about early childhood education in those six villages. TFABB will place a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) in each of those six schools and will also provide each school with many relevant books and literacy resources. The PCVs will all be trained U.S. teachers. In total, we have outlined a six-year project (2009-2015). TFABB will begin with two schools in the first year and then add two schools in each of the following two years.

TFABB will focus on choosing six under-resourced and relatively low-performing schools from among the 50 primary schools in Toledo. Each of the six schools will likely have four to six primary teachers and one or two preschool teachers, for a rough total of 30 to 50 teachers altogether. (Note that most of the principals in the six model schools will likely also be full-time teachers, which is the typical situation in Toledo’s village schools.)

The Peace Corps volunteer will live in the village and will work with teachers in his or her school for several days each week to:

Once a PCV finishes his/her two-year term, we will likely try to send another PCV to that village. Six years (with three different volunteers) is the maximum amount of time we would likely focus on one village school.

TFABB will send three long-standing members of its U.S. volunteer corps (one for preschool and two for primary) to Belize twice a year to meet with the Peace Corps volunteers and the teachers in the model schools for training and support. TFABB’s volunteer corps in the U.S. is made of experienced K-8 teachers and teacher trainers, most with over 20 years of teaching experience and most with more than five years of experience in our Belizean training program.

The daily, year-round support these model-school teachers will receive from the Peace Corps volunteers will undoubtedly improve language art outcomes in those six schools. With such consistent, on-site support and such targeted books and supplies, TFABB’s program can take balanced literacy to the next level in Toledo. The readers’ and writers’ workshop models that TFABB has been outlining in its trainings are well-suited to the many multi-grade schools that predominate in rural Toledo, schools which may have as few as three or four teachers for eight grades. The readers’ and writers’ workshop models allow children to progress independently and allow for the teachers to "conference" independently with each child on a weekly basis for informal assessment.

As mentioned, these six schools will undoubtedly benefit from TFABB’s new program to place year-round PCVs in the schools for literacy support. But TFABB also plans for the six model schools to have a multiplier effect throughout the district’s other 44 schools. The teachers in the six model schools will reach out to their fellow teachers in two main ways:

  1. Demonstrating for their peers: Once the program has been running in a given school for several months (most likely beginning in the spring, since PCVs will arrive in the schools in October), the school will begin to invite teachers from neighboring schools as well as existing coaches to view language arts instruction. Beyond the need to develop the classroom management skills for differentiated language arts instruction, teachers actually need to see the approaches and tools in action in the rural setting of Toledo. The model-school teachers will be able to see the PCVs put the approaches and tools into action, then the teachers from neighboring schools and existing coaches will be able to see the model-school teachers in action. Eventually perhaps the model-school teachers can make short trips to neighboring schools to observe the neighboring teachers in action and offer support.
  2. Training their peers: The model-school teachers will be trained as a second wave of literacy coaches who can assist the existing coaches in wider training events for the district. While these new coaches will certainly receive an in-depth grounding in language arts instruction on a daily basis, they will also receive specific training in presentation and training-design skills. These coaches will bring to their training efforts an even deeper and more-practiced understanding of balanced literacy than the existing coaches, simply because of the large number of days each year that they will be receiving on-site training themselves. These model-school coaches will be able to offer trainings in the areas of preschool, primary, and principalship.

TFABB has already chosen the first two model schools for the 2009-2010 school year, after recent discussions with the Peace Corps, local Ministry and management officials, and the two principals themselves. Serendipitously, the principal of one of the schools is also one of the five coaches who has participated in our pilot-coaching program for the entire past three years. We are so pleased to have this principal/coach serving as a bridge between the already-established and soon-to-come groups of coaches.

There are several other advantages of TFABB’s new model-school program:


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