MORE THAN 200 teachers from all over the Caribbean and North America will today wrap up their first conference on secondary education.
The conference, a joint effort of the Jamaica Teachers' Association and the Caribbean Union of Teachers, got under way on Wednesday night at the Jamaica Grande hotel in Ocho Rios under the theme "Secondary Education in the Caribbean: Access, Quality and Performance."
The occasion provided an opportunity for teachers from Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana to share their classroom experiences with a view to enhancing their teaching techniques.
"This conference is important because the education policies of all the countries in the region are going through the same type of change in order to deal with the emerging issues in education," said Colin Greene, CUT president.
Some of the issues that were raised at the conference included the need for teachers to learn to be more creative in developing strategies to get all children to learn as much as they could.
Dr. Wilma de Melendez, a programme professor at Nova University in the USA, examining this need against the background of the theory of Multiple Intelligence, acknowledged eight different ways in which children can learn.
Other issues raised included the need for teachers to document the successful teaching methods they have come up with.
"It is critically important that teachers in the classroom record their initiatives. These should be recorded for the benefit of others and for posterity," said Education Minister Burchell Whiteman in his opening remarks to the conference.
In his subsequent presentation of the government's policy on secondary education, Mr. Whiteman pointed to the need for the development of a portfolio for all students so that even if they did not gain certification in external and internal exams, there would still be something to indicate their achievements.
