Teacher trainers learn ABC?s of Afro/Maya studies
With the decision firmly made to include African and Maya Studies in the National Primary School curriculum, it is now time for the far more difficult stage of actually implementing the policy. Today News 5?s Patrick Jones sat in on a session aimed at preparing teachers for their new assignment.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
A month and a half before returning to their classrooms, primary school teachers are cramming for the introduction of the African and Maya history component of the social studies curriculum. Co-director of the project, Dr. Angel Cal, says this three day workshop at the House of Culture is preparing a group of people who will train frontline teachers.
Dr. Angel Cal, Co-Director, African and Maya History Project
?These are the twenty-one facilitators and curriculum officers who will be working more directly with the teachers. Dr. Iyo and I will be coordinating the national effort and we will be moving from one town to another because we are having three workshops in the first week of August and another three in the second week of August. But the facilitators are being trained so that they can give more individual attention to teachers in the upper division.?
Over fourteen thousand standard five and six children and roughly five hundred teachers will be immediately impacted by the new addition to the curriculum. Cal says he does not expect the change will come easily.
Dr. Angel Cal
?As with anything no, as with anything that requires modification, anything that requires the strengthening of certain values, I think that it will probably challenge the comfort zone that many people already have with what we have traditionally done in the classroom, but it is time that we revisit that. And we are not at all saying that this is the end of it all. We are anticipating cycles of four years in which this material should be revised and adapted according to the new developments in the field.?
But even as the trainers prepare to train teachers in ways of making African and Maya studies appealing to students, a lot of unanswered questions abound. Cal says this week?s forum is designed specifically to provide some of the answers.
Dr. Angel Cal, Co-Director, African and Maya History Project
?In essence we are specifically asking the facilitators to give us their questions. What are their expectations of a workshop like this? We are asking them to imagine that they are the primary school teachers that are gong to be oriented. And therefore they have given us quite a bit. These materials will be used over the next two days that we have left. They will be addressed so that they in turn will be able to field these questions from the teachers themselves.?
And while the new component is expected to compliment what teachers are doing in other subject areas, parents too will have to adjust to the new learning environment. Cal says the project has planned for everyone involved in the learning process.
Dr. Angel Cal, Co-Director, African and Maya History Project
?Parental involvement is critical in any aspect of education. And particularly in a project of this nature where we are introducing not a new concept, but we are in many ways reinforcing and correcting the balance that we should have had for quite some time. So, what we have done is to produce a teachers? manual for African civilization and teacher?s manual for Mayan civilization. Also we have produced a student manual for Maya civilization and one for African civilization. Those handbooks have been prepared specifically for children at that level. The expectation is that parents will be able to help their children with this material.?
Patrick Jones, for News Five.
