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2010/2011 Program Plan

Our program plan for the 2010/2011 school year has two primary components: 1) Teacher-Training Workshops; and 2) our Model-School Program.

Program One: Teacher-Training Workshops

TFABB has provided training workshops for various groups of Toledo educators every year since 1997. In the 2010-2011 school year, TFABB will offer training to two groups of educators: preschool teachers and primary-school principals.

Preschool Teacher-Training Workshops:

As we have every summer since 2007, TFABB will organize a week-long August workshop for the Toledo district’s 35 preschool teachers. We will organize this workshop in partnership with the Toledo Ministry of Education Office. The workshop will address all aspects of child development including: social, emotional, cognitive, and physical. Within cognitive development, TFABB will share specific activities for language, writing, mathematics and science. The participants will also have the opportunity to experience a model classroom and learn classroom management strategies. TFABB will provide several relevant books and supplies for the participants in the summer workshop. TFABB and the Ministry will also provide one day of follow-up training for all preschool teachers in October 2010.

TFABB first offered training for preschool teachers in 2007 when the Belizean government began a concerted effort to open preschools in Toledo’s rural villages for the first time. Increasing access to high-quality preschool education is important for all children worldwide. In Toledo, where only 57 percent of children ever finish primary school (eighth grade), increasing preschool access is even more crucial. In Toledo, one-quarter of children in the first level of primary school (equivalent to kindergarten) will need to repeat that grade, due in part to lack of English skills and lack of access to preschool. Children who attend preschool are less apt to “fail” (repeat) the early primary grades. When they avoid the frustration of repeating many grades, children are much more likely to finish primary school. TFABB is proud of its role in developing the skills of Toledo’s preschool teachers, who are providing access to preschool for the first time in the history of Toledo’s rural villages.

Principal Training Workshops:

TFABB will provide four days of training during August specifically for the district’s 50 primary-school principals, in conjunction with a Canadian Rotary program. The workshop will address: school planning, literacy, classroom management, and teacher supervision. TFABB and the Ministry of Education will also provide one day of follow-up training for principals in October 2010.

In Toledo, new teachers are typically 18 years old. Most have finished high school but have no teacher training. Only 32 percent of Toledo’s rural teachers are trained, compared to 60 percent nationally. Many of the principals in the rural villages fall into this large group of untrained teachers in Toledo; they have not received full teacher trainer much less principal training. Besides lack of full training, Toledo’s principals face an additional obstacle; roughly 45 of Toledo’s 50 principals are also full-time teachers, many in multi-grade classrooms. TFABB began training specifically for Toledo’s principals in 2005. For many of these administrators, TFABB trainings are the only opportunity they have for professional development as principals.

Program Two: Model-School Program

In June 2009—in a partnership with the Peace Corps—TFABB began a six-year program to provide more direct, year-round language arts support to teachers in several under-resourced schools and to introduce initiatives to increase awareness about early childhood education in those villages. TFABB now considers this “model-school” program its central program.

As of June 2010, TFABB had chosen three rural Toledo schools to support as TFABB model schools: Silver Creek, Santa Teresa, and Barranco. The schools were chosen with input from the Peace Corps, local Ministry and management officials, and the principals themselves. Serendipitously, the principals in two of the schools also served as TFABB “Literacy Coaches” during our 2006-2009 coaches’ training program. These two principal/coaches serve as an important bridge between TFABB’s past and ongoing teacher-training programs.

Across the three model schools, TFABB is supporting 15 teachers and 280 students. These teachers and children face the typical obstacles found in most of Toledo’s rural schools. All three schools are multi-grade schools, meaning that all or some of the teachers are teaching two or three grades in one classroom. Barranco is a three-room schoolhouse covering kindergarten to eighth grade, so each of the three teachers has three grades in his or her classroom! The principals in the three model schools are also full-time teachers, which is the typical situation in Toledo’s village schools. Two of the schools are reachable only after a one-hour trip on a bumpy, unpaved road, while the third is accessible by bus. One of the schools, Santa Teresa, has no electricity. In all three villages, most children live in thatched-roof huts or simple cinder-block homes and speak Kekchi Mayan or Garifuna at home—while being expected to function in English in school.

During the 2010-2011 school year, TFABB is sponsoring a Peace Corps volunteer in each of the three schools and is also providing each school with at least $1,500 worth of relevant books and literacy resources. The three Peace Corps volunteers all have some U.S. teaching experience. Each volunteer lives in the village and works with teachers in the village school for several days each week to:

The daily, year-round support these model-school teachers will receive from the Peace Corps volunteers will undoubtedly improve language art outcomes in these three schools. With such consistent, on-site support and such targeted books and supplies, TFABB’s teacher-training program can take balanced literacy to the next level in Toledo. The readers’ and writers’ workshop models that TFABB has been outlining in its training workshops for many years are well-suited to the many multi-grade schools that predominate in rural Toledo. The readers’ and writers’ workshop models allow children in a multi-grade room to progress independently and allow for the teachers to “conference” one-on-one with each child on a weekly basis for informal assessment.

TFABB will send long-standing members of its U.S. volunteer corps to Belize three times during this school year to meet with the Peace Corps volunteers and the teachers in the model schools for training and support. TFABB’s volunteer training corps in the U.S. is made of experienced preschool teachers, K-8 teachers, professional teacher trainers, principals, and university professors—most with over 20 years of teaching experience and most with more than five years of experience as trainers in our Belizean training program.


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