The big change most teachers are gearing up for in the new school year is the planned incorporation of Mayan and African studies into the primary schools curriculum. Another, less publicized change will be a manual for primary school teachers focused on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. To make sure their manual gets into the classroom at the start of classes, stakeholders have spent the summer converting teachers into users of the manual. Those sessions continued today, and Keith Swift reports.
Keith Swift Reporting,
When the new school year starts in two weeks, this MBRS teacher’s training manual will be on the desks of all primary school teachers. The manual will be integrated into the primary school curriculum which is where these teachers and today’s workshop come in.
K. Mustafa Toure,
“The idea is to take selected teachers from schools in the coastal area and provide them with this material that was prepared to help teach about the coral reef which is important to Belize.”
About 90 teachers are participating in the workshop sponsored by the Belize Fishermen Cooperative Association. The fishermen are using a grant from UNDP to specifically target teachers in the coastal communities of Placencia, Sartenja, Punta Gorda, and today Belize City. K. Mustafa Toure is the association’s policy advisor.
K. Mustafa Toure,
“The communities around the fishermen and their families they need to be aware why it is so important for us to protect the reef. The fishermen they understand it but we are trying to get to the coastal communities initially through this project even though other teachers will get it but BFCA think it is important for teachers in their communities learn about this and learn how to use it.”
And the Ministry of Education agrees. Policymakers say the training manual should be seamlessly integrated into the curriculum since it isn’t a new subject or a new textbook; it is simply an added resource for teachers.
Lois Barber, Belize District Primary School Supervisor
“It is not something that will be difficult. It is not something that the teachers will say it is too late to try and get this into the system. Already the guides are infused into this and so what we are depending on now is that teachers that are here today they will go back to their respective schools and be agents. They will sell the use of this book to other teachers.”
And that is something both the fishermen and Ministry of Education hope will be voluntarily since though the lessons in the manual aren’t mandatory they believe they are necessary.
Similar workshops have been held countrywide.