By Omar Anderson, Staff ReporterEDUCATION MINISTER Burchell Whiteman had fun yesterday, not behind his desk at Heroes' Circle in Kingston, but in front of a group of 29 lively grade seven students at Holy Trinity High in Kingston.
It was Teachers' Day and the Education Minister chose to take their math class as part of his salute to teachers.
At 9:30 a.m., there was silence inside Grade 7R as the students focused on their books.
"Everybody is good so far," a smiling Mr. Whiteman said as he guided some of the students to determine the mode, mean, median, and range of numbers during a 45-minute lesson on statistics and probability.
Mr. Whiteman, a former Mathematics teacher, came well prepared with at least three different teaching aids, including dices.
He also tossed a coin, which he compared to spinning the toss in a cricket match, to explain probability. Three groups of two students were given coins to toss and record how many times they got either heads or tails. It was obvious fun inside Grade 7R, as the students smiled at every flip of the coin.
"All of this is showing that if there are two things that can happen by chance, they can happen in equal proportion," Mr. Whiteman said, as his students for 45 minutes nodded in acknowledgement.
Later, the Minister used dice, coloured paper clips and coloured chalks to underscore his points.
At the end of the class at 10:15 a.m., 13-year-old Shanee Cole was so impressed with the Minister, that she wanted to take a photograph with him. The Minister was also pleased with 12-year-old Oshane Brown, who asked him why he chose to teach maths.
"Mathematics was always my favourite subject and still is," replied Mr. Whiteman. "One thing maths does for you is, it helps you to reason properly."
Following the lesson, students in Grade 7R said they totally enjoyed the Minister's class.
"I enjoyed the class, it was good," said Devano Lewis, 12. "I didn't know the plural of a die was dice."
Thirteen-year-old Sharielle Peart, who presented the Minister with a Holy Trinity crest engraved in bronze, said she learnt a lot during the lesson.
"Learning is about fun," she said. "If you are learning and playing with a die, it must be fun."
Teachers' Day, according to Mr. Whiteman yesterday, was started in 1988 by the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce which felt that a day must be chosen to appreciate teachers.
Mr. Whiteman admitted he had a bias towards Holy Trinity yesterday.
"It's one of the nearer schools to my Ministry building, but it's also a school in which I have a particular interest, because as one of the recently-upgraded high schools, it has really been making very serious efforts to lift itself with community support, and by its own effort, to serve the students of this community optimally."
Mr. Whiteman spoke about his preparation for the class, and commented generally on teachers' use of aids to help deliver lessons more quickly and effectively.
"I think many teachers do use teaching aids," he said. "At the early childhood and primary levels, the teachers do invest a lot in using teaching aids. I believe as we go higher up the system we tend to rely on the book. When I indicated to the class teacher that I was coming, she said she would need to organise some aids for this class but in fact I brought my own."
