JTA wants a revamp of teacher training

WESTERN BUREAU:

Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) boss Jasford Gabriel is calling on the nation’s teacher-training institutions to revamp their programmes to create the capacity for graduates to be able to manage online teaching, which they are now being forced to embrace because of the dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gabriel, who was speaking at a recent Rotary Club of Life meeting in Montego Bay, said the method of teaching and learning has now changed, so teachers will have to retool to manage themselves and their students virtually.

“We must partner as we lead in a crisis, to look at the way we train our teachers, both in the colleges and while they are in service,” said Gabriel. “The programmes now in the colleges must be geared more towards managing the learning management systems online so that teachers can be more effective, as we move away from the traditional mode of doing things.”

NEED FOR PARTNERSHIP

According to Gabriel, who is also the principal of Manchester High School in Manchester, there is a need for greater partnership in looking at the working conditions and wages of teachers so that those factors don’t contribute to the nation losing its best teachers to other countries.

Garth Anderson, the dean of the Teachers Colleges of Jamaica, is supportive of Gabriel’s call for the revamping of its programmes, saying that the colleges were pondering the business of online teaching long before the advent of COVID-19.

“I think COVID has forced us into a new normal that will certainly become the norm. We are resolute that this is a platform that we are going to continue to build on so that we can provide teacher education and professional development for teachers, wherever they are across the country,” said Anderson.

“Teaching online is something that we in the teacher-training colleges have always been trying to put on the front burner as we operate,” continued Anderson.

“What COVID-19 has allowed us to do is to intensify that effort. We do have a programme within the teacher-training system to keep our teachers up-to-date, and persons have been trained to train other faculty members to keep us with the technology. That is something that we have not been doing, COVID has hastened these steps,” said Anderson, who is also the principal of Church Teachers’ College.