A presentation of good practices in Jamaican schools

Introduction

There is no doubt that those of us charged with the responsibility of educating our young minds are faced with enormous challenges of low motivation; incidents of violence in the classroom, underachievement of males, in particular, and lack of interest on the part of parents, just to name a few.

Is this situation hopeless? Can we overcome these obstacles, these barriers to learning?

We could begin with an examination of our concept of education. What really is education?

Education is about the development of the total human being. It goes to the very soul of an individual, seeking to unearth that which is within and facilitating the development of that potential. "It involves learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be" (UNESCO and Education International Class Acts, n.d.).

The examples of what we refer to as 'good practices', are presented as initiatives of educators, who in the midst of a sea of problems, have managed to unearth potential in students and are making a difference in their lives. Needless to say, there are many more successful stories in many more schools, but these stories are just parts of a bigger picture.

We hope that the telling of these stories will encourage and motivate educators to face the challenges of the classroom.

It is Not Easy, but it is Possible

1. TRANSFORMING ADVERSITY INTO POSSIBILITIES

For obvious reasons, this school will not be named.

Approximately one year ago, the guidance counsellors from this institution, sought help from the Guidance and Counselling Unit of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture through its Trauma Intervention Programme, to assist in the counselling of a number of students who were displaying lack of interest in school work, aggressive behaviour and presenting general anti-social attitudes.

The counsellors in the school, through preliminary investigations and counselling, had determined that these student behaviours were linked to unresolved grief.

Each one had experienced the loss of a loved one, by violent or natural causes, and in some cases, the loss was of people whom they (the students) felt were the only ones that loved and cared for them, both physically and emotionally.

Upon assessment, it was decided that these youngsters needed indepth psychological help, to begin the process of 'crossing over' and to begin to grieve. For, some had no time to grieve, as they were left alone to handle life's daily challenges.

These students faithfully attended the sessions, made progress and began to settle in school, exhibiting positive changes in behaviour.

A bonding began to develop and after a while, they requested that the psychologist begin to treat them as a group. This group which began as 'troubled' individuals creating 'trouble' for others, has blossomed into a tightly knitted group, who, in the process of healing, has gained some insights and some skills in helping their members as well as others to grieve.

From the blossoms, a plant is developing – a plant which is now a source of help to other students in that school.

Adversity has presented opportunities. This school now has a Student Grief Support Group.

We celebrate the nurturing of a group of students, who even as they grieve, are developing a caring community towards others in their school !

2. UPLIFTING PARENTS FOR THE CREATION OF A BETTER SCHOOL

In 1988, the present Principal arrived at St. Peter Claver Primary School which is located in one of the violence-prone communities of Jamaica, off Waltham Park Road in South West St. Andrew. There she found a school with an enrollment of three hundred and fifty (350) students with an average attendance of two hundred and twenty (220); a teaching staff demoralized and a P. T. A consisting of a president and twenty-five (25) members. The School Board and the Principal realized that for the school to make progress, the P. T. A had to be a central element.

The Principal and Board met with the small group, shared a new vision for the school and outlined the role of each sector of the school community in the attainment of this vision. The P. T. A was happy, but doubtful that the community’s image of the school as a place for underachievers could ever be changed. Nonetheless, they were prepared to give it a try.

That small group began to meet on Wednesdays. The school was very careful to ensure that it was the parents themselves who planned the agendas for the meetings and conducted the meetings, with the teachers as a support group. There was no rush to elect officers or to have an executive. Meetings were held once per term; (not too often). There was no collection of dues and most of the meetings were training sessions for parents, with resource persons in areas such as Nutrition, Health, and Parenting Skills; conducting sessions which sought to help parents to manage their own lives as well as their children’s. Parents were encouraged to come in to speak with their children’s teachers and teachers’ attendance was compulsory – seen as a part of their jobs.

Bit by bit the numbers began to increase; parents began to visit the school; began to sweep the classrooms; began to help to clean the toilets; began to deliver goods for the school. A movement was beginning to take shape. The school noticed that there was an outstanding group of about sixteen (16) parents that visited frequently and was always wanting to help. This group was asked to form a committee; they were given training in leadership outside of the school and community settings. Very soon the group began to utilize the training they had received. They began to organize themselves and became an outreach group known as ‘The Caring Parents of St. Peter Claver.’

Dressed with T-shirts, made by their own hands and bearing their motto, they began a recruitment drive in the community. Each year, as students graduated, and parents left, new parents came onto this committee. Within five (5) years, the attendance at P. T. A. meetings moved from twenty-five (25) to three hundred and fifty (350).

The enrollment of students increased, as parents became more involved and the entire school began to participate in the P. T. A meetings. Parents began to know and understand some of the activities that their children were exposed to during the school day.

As the school and the parents began to learn more about each other, the school felt that it should help parents to acquire some skills in order that they could be better able to participate in their children’s education.

The School Board was approached and the Chairman managed to secure twenty sewing machines, two teachers and a room on the premises. Fifteen parents began training in dressmaking with a view to seeking employment in the Free Zone, which was recruiting labour at the time. With the involvement of Human Employment and Resource Training (HEART), this training programme was expanded to dress designing and hand embroidery, with two sessions per year and training offered to twenty-five (25) parents per session. This training has enabled parents to obtain employment as well as to be self-employed.

The sewing of costumes for the school’s dance troupe is now done exclusively by parents, who have graduated from this training programme. The school now trains one hundred and twenty parents yearly in Parenting skills. The parents do extensive networking in monitoring student behaviour on the streets; the vendors who are allowed to sell at the school, must have at least one child enrolled in the school and arrangements have been made with employers of the parents to release them for P. T. A meetings. This arrangement has taken root to the extent that a few employers call the school to ensure that parents are in fact attending the meetings.

Parents plan activities on ‘Teachers’ Day’ to honour teachers and a recent activity is the emergence of birthday parties hosted by parents, in celebration of their children’s teachers’ birthdays.

Each year the P. T. A embarks on a project to uplift the school, whether it be painting, or fencing the school perimeter. Average attendance at P. T. A meetings today, ten years later has risen to five hundred.

Interestingly, the parents still do not see the need for a formal executive. Instead the group of sixteen continues, rotating on a two-yearly basis, a growing number of them fathers.

Today, with the parents as an integral part, this school, to which no one in the community wanted to send their children, has moved from an average attendance of two hundred and twenty to an average attendance of nine hundred and eighty.

During the Common Entrance era, the ‘passes’ jumped dramatically from eight to eighty, the school’s top scorer in the Butterkist Mathematics Competition in 1999 totalling eighty one points, closely behind the overall top scorer with eighty eight.

The 1999 Ministry of Education and Culture empanellment revealed that seventy five percent of the students at the school were reading above their grade level.

The trophy cabinet in the Principal’s office, empty at the start of her tenure, is now full to overflowing with trophies for cultural, sporting, debating and spelling competitions. The PTA Leader, a parent, proudly proclaims: “The thing about it is that there is a good relationship among the entire school community. Good communication is the key. Parents are coming more fully. They look forward to the workshops which help them to become better parents which in turn help students to do better in school.”

Says a sixth grader: “Over the past six years, I see a cleaner environment, students trying to work harder, to bring up their grades, cleaner classrooms and care of the plants.”

We celebrate the upliftment of parents in the creation of a better school culture.

3. UNLEASHING LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL

In September of 1998, in an effort to motivate students at Greater Portmore High School, the Change From Within programme of the Ministry of Education and Culture approached the Head Boy of St. George’s College to share his experiences with them.

This young man who himself had just experienced success in the same examinations and who was preparing to sit G.C.E. Advanced Level subjects, jumped at the opportunity, and gained what he found a very useful and inspiring experience. It opened his eyes to the need for young, confident and successful students to inspire their peers through the sharing of their knowledge and experience. “I realized that this had to be done, but I knew that I couldn’t do it alone”.

Within four months, a team consisting of boys and girls from two or three corporate area High Schools was created. Through reading, library and Internet research, subscription to magazines and journals, as well as help from adults, this team of youngsters now offers services to schools free of cost.

Armed with the most up-to-date technological tools, the team offers peer counselling, help to primary school students making the transition to high schools, and help in the organization and training of Schools’ Student Leadership bodies.

In a recent interview the group leader revealed that the group, realizing that its membership was in the main comprised of senior students who would soon be on their way to college, universities and the world of work, has put a succession plan in place. They are now recruiting and training younger students from grades 9-11 to continue the work of the group.

One Guidance Counsellor who experienced the group at work reported that “their professional approach to the task has had a tremendous impact on both teachers and students”.

We celebrate this team of young innovators who given the exposure will build on what they have started!

4. SCHOOL RESOURCES + COMMUNITY RESOURCES = ROUNDED STUDENTS

The St. Jago High School views its interaction with the wider community as integral to the educational development of the students who pass through the doors of the institution. As a result of this belief there exists at that institution, a very well developed Community Volunteer Programme, through which children teach, care for, provide service to others, develop their knowledge, skills and attitude, and foster meaningful school-community relations.

Students do voluntary service in fourteen institutions in and around the community. These include ‘Children First’, ‘Kids Are Us’ Day Care Centre, the Archieves of the Institute of Jamaica, and the Women’s Centre Foundation of Jamaica.

The volunteer programme with the Jamaica People’s Museum of Craft and Technology of the Institute of Jamaica began with the training of six students from St. Jago in November 1999. At the end of the one week training programme, students were assigned to three areas of the Museum’s operations:

1. Assisting Tour Guides, with a view to becoming Junior Tour Guides.
2. Assisting Tutors in Saturday Workshop Programme.
3. Assisting in design of a small area of the People’s Museum as a ‘hands-on’ educational corner for children.

The students completed the programme successfully and made proposals for the modification of some sections of the museums to allow for interaction with the viewer. They suggested that viewers learn first-hand how some of the exhibits were used, e.g. the use of the mortar and pestle to crush corn and pimento, the use of the fork and shovel for farming and the use of the plane for the shaving of wood for carpentry. The Museum has taken these suggestions for implementation.

This exercise was so successful, that a second phase was developed. Between ten and twenty were trained and coached in the techniques of social research with the basic objective of enhancing the self-development and research skills of those students, and to enhance community awareness of historic preservation within the Spanish Town Historic District.

Children were exposed to the fields of historic preservation, surveying and mapping, and museology. The students were coached as student researchers and conducted a four week survey collecting information from approximately 3000 Spanish Town Historic District Residents, on how they felt about their historic surroundings and what they were willing to do to help in the development of the district.

To date, a third phase is being developed, involving more students and involving them in encouraging the people to visit and learn form the museum.

Mrs. Morgan-Shields, one of the Guidance Counsellors at the school, expressed happiness at seeing the students combining what they are learning in the classroom with what they are learning at the museum and from the people in the community. “It is a joy to behold”, she declares.

The combination of school and community resources produces students who are researchers, innovators and community workers—rounded citizens.

We celebrate the creation of a programme which is attempting to create through the educational process, students with a sense of responsibility for community and country !

5. SETTING THE CULTURE ALIGHT

In 1977, in response to the Honourable Minister of Education and Culture’s expression of a need for Culture Agents in schools, a committee was established, through the Division of Culture, to supervise the implementation of the process. Pilot schools were identified, as also persons within the schools who, in the judgement of the schools’ administration and staff, would ‘fit the bill’.

The objectives of the establishment of the Agents were:

1. To bring to the total school community, a greater awareness of our history and traditions.
2. To foster within the school a sense of identity and self.
3. To foster within the school a sense of pride in self and country.
4. To engender tolerance and respect for others especially other cultures within and without Jamaica.
5. To assist in the creation of a climate in which the development of positive attitudes and values may be encouraged in schools.
6. To foster and engender within the school a critical approach to life and society, encouraging them to take responsibility for their own development and that of their community while promoting a concept of free will.
7. To strengthen the historic cultural expressions indigenous to Jamaica and the Caribbean and so develop a Caribbean identity within the school.

Treadlight Primary School, located in the parish of Clarendon, is a shining example in its approach to this task.

Since the inception of the programme in 1998, they have managed to combine the rich cultural heritage in and around the school by using things that the students know about and participate in, not only for entertainment and for medals in the national cultural competitions, but for the realization of the objectives of the schools’ programmes.

The Culture Agent in her report states: “Culture is dependent on the environment. It is a community development where the teachers go into the community and find resource persons from among them”.

Research carried out in the community by both students and teachers is used to complement the formal curriculum.

In the area of music, the school utilizes in the classroon forms such as Tambo, Jubba, Coya, Busta-bus yenvella, Zepaul, which are peculiar to that community and through which that school community engenders a sense of history, pride, and knowledge of self and community.

The local language of the community enters the classroom and is being used as a springboard for the teaching of the English Language.

Through the 4H Clubs, the traditional foods such as pone, jerk, cassava flour, ducuno (‘blue drawers’) become part of the culinary classes of the school.

During the ‘Jamaica Night’ celebrations, young men, women and children join with the school community to highlight traditional dress styles, and oral and written skills are developed by the encouragement of comparisons through poetry, song and other forms of expression.

The Social Studies classes come to life through the voice of the community, which helps to provide historical data on the very school itself, which is believed to be sited on lands that were once the sugar cane and tobacco growing property of a slave master.

The treadmill on the opposite side of the property, once used as a punishment for run-a-ways, has become the site of archeological research for students and teachers, with objects such as a cooling jar and traditional utensils collected and displayed at the school.

Coal burning, which is a major income earner in the community becomes an opportunity for the school to develop environmental awareness in the district of Treadlight. The students become familiar with the entire culture of the coal burning exercise of the community, the sharing of the work through ‘morning sport’ with rhythm and song accompanies the chopping and packing of the wood; the coal burners language and the way the helm is organized. This experience feeds into an Environmental Programme, which while recognizing the economic importance of the coal burning culture to the citizens, seeks through education, through replanting of trees, as well as the cutting of parts of, instead of the whole tree, to develop an understanding of the importance of preserving the environment.

Treadlight Primary is showing the positive role of a people’s culture in the development of responsible, proud, creative and happy human beings.

We celebrate the recognition of a cultural heritage outside the walls of a school and making it a part of the very culture of that school!

6. WORKING TOGETHER MAKES TEACHING AND LEARNING EASIER

The idea of corporate learning is not an original one. As we search for solutions it is desirable to look at existing programmes that are working elsewhere in the world and adapt them to our situation.

This is the case at Buff Bay Primary School in Portland. This school originally had their students streamed in the usual accepted manner—remedial streams and academic streams.

This arrangement not having the desired effect, the Territorial Education Officer under whose supervision the school fell, suggested that school give the Corporate Learning strategy a try.

Essentially what this involves is a team approach to learning, with students of varied abilities and interests placed in one group. In the words of the Coordinator of the programme since its inception, “They work together, and in so doing help one another and also help themselves”.

The programme involves the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students and focuses on three subject areas, Science, Mathematics and Reading.

Initially, the school had to deal with the fears of parents, who felt that their “bright” children, would be at a disadvantage, working in groups with students deemed to be less gifted.

The approach taken was to explain the programme to the parents, helping them to see the value of co-operation among all students.

A committee of parents was formed, and this helped to improve parents’ acceptance of the programme, to the extent that there is now active participation from them.

Parents come in to tell stories, help to clean and decorate the classrooms and even contribute in areas of need, as in the case of providing lighting for one classroom.

A few hours of observation of the programme in progress were very rewarding. One could see the children taking responsibility for their own learning with less reliance on teachers, and more evidence of self-assurance.

Each group has a student leader, with leadership rotated on a weekly basis. The teachers report that this approach requires more work initially, as the “chalk and talk” approach is abandoned for more student “hands on” activities. It requires more research, more resourcing of materials and good lesson planning on the part of the teachers. However, the work gets less as the children take charge more. One student sees it this way; “ I am important and I have something that I can teach my classmates, and they have something to teach me.”

There is evidence that the approach is helping students who read below their grade level, as they seem to learn more readily from their peers, while those who are more advanced are developing research skills and moving further ahead at a more rapid pace.

A teacher told the story of a student who never spoke in the group before, because she felt that she could not manage the work. Over time she has blossomed into a confident, knowledgeable youngster –“Is not so you should do it. Try it this way. See, a tell you. Now the answer is right” (A group solution of a mathematics problem).

Leadership, Self-esteem building, Cooperation and Conflict Management are all combined in this approach to learning. Coordinator, Mrs. Marcia Bygrave, captures the essence in these words: “ It (Corporate Learning) gets children to be more sharing and caring, learning from and teaching each other.”

We celebrate this team approach which is making things happen at Buff Bay !

7. READING THROUGH THE GAME OF CHESS

Charlie Smith Comprehensive High School is located in an inner-city area in South West St. Andrew. It had in 1992 a student population of approximately 540, and was faced with a problem experienced by most if not all the high schools in Jamaica – the problem of very low reading levels.

The school’s administration and staff at that time decided these students had to be convinced that they had the potential to master reading. The question was how to demonstrate to these intelligent, active youngsters, most of whom were boys, that this was possible. The decision was made to focus on an area of strength in the youngsters and to build a reading programme around this strength.

These students could argue; they could, through their wit, outsmart any well-read person. They were using this strength inside and outside of the classroom in negative ways. The challenge therefore was to allow them to discover this strength which they possessed, and to engage it in positive activities, as a means of building confidence in developing reading skills.

A chess club was formed. Children who habitually stole lunch money or got away from taking responsibility for breaking rules previously, now transferred their skills to positive intellectual and self-fulfilling activity.

In no time, these young people had introduced the game of chess to the rest of the school population as well as to a neighbouring school. They began to plan and participate in inter school competitions and independent of the school’s administration and staff, they registered (using their own funds) the school in the National Competition, and gradually began to pit their skills against those of children from schools with a tradition of chess.

Through these interactions, they were exposed to areas and people outside of their own social setting. It gave them an opportunity to acquire and embrace new social skills as well as to teach others outside of the realms of their own experiences.

Their involvement in chess transformed their conduct both as students and as peer educators. A thirst for reading was created. The students became ambassadors for their school.

Within the short period of a single school year, changes in the reading level of the students were noticeable. The Table which follows bears evidence.

In the year all but four students had moved, some dramatically, others incrementally, and all had begun a journey into literacy.

These changes, though incremental, must be celebrated as they represent the building of confidence and self esteem: platforms on which these youngsters will move forward.

Today, these youngsters, with the exception of two are still in school, still continuing on the journey to literacy.

We celebrate the effort to use children’s natural talents to make them better readers.

8. A PORT IN THE STORM

Containers have become very useful for the expansion of classroom space in some educational institutions. At Bridgeport High School, containers are used for a different purpose.

A growing concern on the part of the School’s Administration to get to the root cause of anti-social behaviour of some of the students led to the establishment of the Student Development Centre in 1997. This centre is a six-room container donated by Jamaica Container Repair Service. Three rooms are occupied by Guidance Counsellors and the others by the Examination Coordinator and the Job Placement Teacher. It is no accident that these three functions are housed in the same container, as each combine to serve the different needs of the students.

Students are suspended only after numerous efforts are made to help them to change their behaviour, and in the cases of students who the school knows cannot benefit from suspension, the system of in-house suspension is applied. Under this system, students are separated from the rest of the school population and are placed in the room, surrounded by Guidance Counsellors, Examination Coordinators and Job Placement Teachers. Here, they receive counselling, and are exposed to various educational presentations (eg. Videos produced by the Ministry of Health).

Students involved in conflict situations are allowed to use this room as “time out” to deal with their anger or frustration, and counsellors get an opportunity to determine the reasons for their anti-social behaviours, thereby helping in designing solutions.

Principal Karen Kennedy readily admits that since the inception of the Centre, there have been noticeable improvements in student behaviour. Says Mrs. Kennedy, “Some don’t go back, as they benefit from the counselling”. The school, however, is not sitting on its laurels, aware that the Centre, though making a difference, is not as effective as it could be.

Mrs. Kennedy and her staff feel that the Centre can be made to be more meaningful, and so more thought is being given to find ways of strengthening and improving this innovation. Bridgeport High is determined to continue working to end anti-social behaviour among our school children.

We celebrate the search for new and better ways to help this school tackle anti-social behaviour and make a difference in the lives of their students.

9. PARTNERSHIP IN EDUCATION

An interesting and noteworthy development is taking place in three innercity communities in South West St. Andrew.

Three schools, Greenwich All Age, St. Andrew Primary and Whitfield All Age, have pooled resources with a Non-Governmental Organization, Hope For Children Development Limited, in a programme which seeks to tackle the low levels of reading among children in those schools.

Richard Troupe is the Executive Director of Hope For Children. “Too many of our primary school leavers are struggling to read and write and we feel that through the use of our computer lab, we can help to make even a small difference”, he says.

The teachers and technical staff of Hope For Children have taken on the challenge. Together, they plan the lessons. Forty children from each school make weekly trips to the offices of the Hope For Children Foundation, where they are exposed to computer aided reading classes, using the ten terminals in the labs. Teachers use both pre- and post- tests instruments to evaluate the progress of the students and the work done in the computer laboratories is followed up through classroom activities.

The Vice-Principal of Whitfield All Age reports that the programme is having a positive impact. “The children like the exposure to computers. They catch on daily. There is an improvement in the identification of basic words”.

These sentiments are echoed by the Vice-Principal of Greenwich All Age—“Positive impact, marked improvement”.

The teachers also benefit from the programme, as they too learn the technology and develop their own competence in the area.

The lab offers an introductory course in Information Technology, an after school course for 6-15 year olds and has trained ten police officers from police stations in the community.

The programme is hampered by the unavailability of funds to acquire a literacy software package that is compatible with our situation. This, they see as a challenge, not a deterrent.

We celebrate this beginning of a partnership in education.

10. LIGHTING THE DARKNESS: A School’s Search For a Way of Bringing Male Students “Into the Light”.)

In October 1999, the Administration and Staff of Lennon High School in the parish of Clarendon launched Lennon Association for Male Promotion (LAMP). They identified the following objectives:

• To organize and administer social activities among male students at Lennon.
• To foster and encourage the involvement of male students in healthy, positive activities and endeavours designed to improve their overall image and general well- being.
• To develop and maintain a favourable public image of the school by promoting such programmes and activities which would ensure that students relate positively to the host community in particular and to the wider community in general.
• To address some of the negative concerns as they related to the rapid marginalization of the male population in the society.
• To provide a cadre of positive male role models for other students to emulate.
• To prepare male students to take their place in society as model citizens, fathers and husbands.

The school population felt that it was not enough to have a day in each year dedicated to the male school population, but that a formalized structure, which would be visible throughout the year was the ideal model for their situation.

A Constitution was drafted and an official launch took place.

Under the Constitution, membership is open to all male members of the school population, provided that the individual shows willingness to make serious efforts to display positive behaviour in the school. Male students in leadership positions, who are thus expected to exhibit exemplary conduct, are targetted, as also are former male students of the school who are known as good role models.

The Organization is managed by a Management Committee, consisting of not more than eleven members, five elected from the Student Body and six staff advisors, inclusive of the two Guidance Counsellors. This Management Committee forms the Executive Body with President, Vice-President, Secretary/\Treasurer, Assistant Secretary/Treasurer, Public Relations Officer, all constituting the elected student members. The Staff members are ADVISORS only.

There are rules in relation to attendance, management of finances, disciplinary matters, relationship between management committee and general membership.

In the eight months of the organization’s existence, it has maintained weekly meetings, organized and conducted by the boys.

Programmes are designed and implemented by the boys, with advice and assistance from the teacher-advisors. These programmes span a broad spectrum, from building and enhancing social graces to awakening interest, and improving performance, in the academic sphere.

The boys were recently exposed to classes in etiquette and this is to be followed by the practical application of the knowledge gained, through the hosting of activities such as dinner parties.

One way of gaining the interest of the boys in the various subject areas, was the recent organization by LAMP of a series of quizzes among the school population with the boys themselves providing the coaching for the various competing groups. LAMP also plans regular panel discussions on the role of males, male sexuality as well as physical and emotional issues affecting males. An interesting development is that there are now more boys turning out for training for the quizzes—a new phenomenon in the institution.

The members of LAMP have recently suggested and are now working on a programme of visitations to ‘shut-ins’ in the community of Mocho.

The school is now witnessing a new interest in school among the boys, an improvement in discipline, and a new awareness of male social responsibility. At least one school in the area, seeing the difference that LAMP is making at Lennon, has asked their help in the formation of a similar organization in their school.

In eight short months, a lamp has been lit, shedding light in the dark corners of a community.

We celebrate the efforts of this school to address the ever growing concern on the performance of our male students in schools!

11. AFTERWORD

These ten stories have been about teachers, students, administrators, guidance counsellors, and community groups, from inner city Kingston and St Andrew to the hills and valleys of Portland and Clarendon.

They differ in location, in local customs, in experiences, in the types of resources at their disposal. Yet they are the same --- the same, because each case is an example of the creative application of resources, limited in all cases, in the creation of better students.

All are stories of effort to effect change, not from without, but from within the minds and spirits of the children and their teachers.

The teachers are the same as you, the children too the same as your children. Like them you too, no doubt, are facing problems—low motivation, anti-social and unruly behaviour, delinquency of all kinds, low achievement. And like them, you too can help to bring about change from within.

Note, first, that they all displayed a willingness to search for solutions. They did not throw up their hands in despair, blaming today’s generation, blaming their parents, or the powers that be. They searched for answers from within.

Secondly, they turned to creative and often unconventional ways, but in so doing they had to mobilize the teachers, the community, and in one case, they even turned to the Ministry. But most of all, they mobilized the students, who themselves often turn out to be sources of creative ideas.

Finally, they stuck to the task energetically, not half-heartedly. Some produced dramatic changes, others small incremental ones, in the short run, but over time those that have lasted have produced a sustainable culture of learning and creativity. This is because they initiated change from within the teachers, the parents, and the students.

For Further Information, Contact Should Be Made With The Guidance & Counselling Unit, Caenwood Centre At Email: edguid@cwjamaica.com

All rights reserved. This may not be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher.

Guidance Counselling Unit of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Change from Within Project), in collaboration with the University of the West Indies, Mona.