Literacy workshop ends for Anglican Teachers

Belize has always boasted a high percentage of literacy in its population. But as many teachers will tell you, we can always do better. News Five’s Alyssa Noble reports on one initiative to do just that.

Alyssa Noble, Reporting
While students were at home relishing the last days of summer vacation, their teachers were hard at work participating in a week long literacy workshop which ended this morning with a brief ceremony at the Bishop Sylvestre Memorial Centre.

Carol Babb, General Manager, Anglican Schools
?The workshop went well. The whole purpose of the literacy workshop is our quest to ensure that all children in Anglican Schools at the end of eight years are able to read, write and comprehend. Today, the teachers are displaying all that they learnt, all the new strategies, all the new ideas, and so they have made charts. They have produced the ideas and they want to share it with other teachers and invited guests to show that children can learn to read with effort and determination.?

Some of those ideas include the creation of Belizean story books.

Carol Flowers, Teacher, St. Mary?s School
?What we have decided to do is to make some books that our children will be able to associate with. Meaning that we have a lot of story books in our classrooms that are foreign. So we wanted to bring a little bit of culture so that our children may be able to relate to it. The books were made by the teachers to give an appreciation of the culture.?

Educators also showed their creative side.

Nelma Mortis, Admin. Principal, Queen?s Square Anglican School
?Education is lifelong learning, and you can never stop learning and so therefore we picked up a lot of new ideas. You can never run out of ideas. That?s a way of learning, you get from other people?s experiences and so I think that it really enhanced and I am, personally as a principal, I am going back into the school and I?m going to ensure that all of my teachers utilize these skills and apply themselves.?

Carol Babb
?I am very impressed by what they did. I have been observing them all week and they seem extremely motivated so I am excited for the children, I think they will get a set of teachers who are motivated to go the extra mile for them to ensure that they learn to read and write.?

And by the looks of it, these kids should have no problem.

Alyssa Noble reporting for News Five.