Teacher training to help students hampered during pandemic

CMC – The Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is collaborating with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, and Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)Commission to facilitate the training of approximately 15,000 educators in skills to assist their students to overcome the learning losses occasioned by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The capacity-building course is designed to support educators with the implementation of the CDB/CARICOM/OECS Learning Recovery and Enhancement Programme (Let’s REAP), which is expected to begin the first week in October this year.

The programme will improve the competencies of five cohorts of educators in three modules over two years. Upon successful completion, participants will receive a certificate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) Joint Boards of Teacher Education. The programme targets educators from all CARICOM member states and Associate Members

The 45-hour course will focus on three core components of Let’s REAP: Leadership and Accountability, Assessment and Differentiated Instruction, and Communities of Practice (CoP).

In Leadership and Accountability, educational leaders are expected to garner knowledge on creating enabling and conducive conditions for learning as well as distributive leadership and accountability in a school setting.

Under the Assessment and Differentiated Instruction Module, educators are expected to learn how to develop and analyse diagnostic and other forms of formative assessments, use the assessments to effectively tailor lessons to the individual learning needs of each student, and develop competence in differentiating instruction to ensure each learner succeeds.

The CoP module is expected to train school leaders and teachers on how to coordinate teamwork and collaboration, in school and virtual environments, to improve teaching-learning.

The course is being delivered online and will seek to model how communities of practices are implemented by equipping participants with tools to form online learning communities to support each other as they hone their skills in leadership, accountability, and assessment for learning.

About 15,000 educators in the region will be trained to assist their students to overcome the learning losses occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic

The CDB/ CARICOM/ OECS Let’s REAP for Caribbean Schools Programme was developed in response to the learning loss occasioned by disruptions to schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has shown that education gaps have widened between high-performing and low-performing students, especially for those with low socioeconomic status, and those who have special educational needs or a disability (SPED).

Let’s REAP, which was launched in July 2021 with input from the CARICOM Regional Network of Planning Officers (RNPO), the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT), the Caribbean Association for Principals of Secondary Schools (CAPSS), and the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC).

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