Tourism is everywhere - on the television, on the radio, on billboards, and it is even on the Primary School Examination. In fact, tourism is everywhere except in the classroom. But that will hopefully change in the new school year as the Ministry of Education along with the Belize Tourism Board is working to train teachers on how to incorporate a tourism teaching module into the social studies curriculum. The work started today at the Princess Hotel where 21 teachers are being trained on how to use the module. The workshop's facilitator Judy Diego says these teachers are being trained to train other teachers in their respective districts.
Judith Diego, District Education Officer
"In our Social Studies curriculum we have different strands which would be like broad headings which the teachers would retrieve information from. Tourism comes under the strand world so we do have tourism in our curriculum. This workshop is in order to afford them the competency and the confidence in order to deliver information about tourism.
These trainers are trainers to go back to the district to train teachers. So this is a training of trainers workshop. So we have teachers from the Corozal to the Toledo District. I am trying to facilitate them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to go back and this session is really interactive. So all the approaches that I am using today, I expect them to go back and deliver using these same approaches with their teachers.
Tourism has been in our curriculum. We have a new comprehensive curriculum that has been in the primary schools from 1998 and the catching up would be on developing, or acquiring, the necessary knowledge to go back and deliver in the classroom and that's what we are doing here today through a module that has been developed."
The workshop ends tomorrow. We should note that a tourism syllabus has been around since as early as 1999 but teachers were never trained how to incorporate it into their syllabus.
