TEACHERS AT POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR WORKSHOP

A new approach to the quality of teaching and learning in the school system,aimed at achieving better positive behaviour, was made this week, in two of the six primary schools in Anguilla, as a pilot project.

Facilitators, Beryce Nixon and Tricia Campbell, with Teachers at workshop

The week-long Positive Behaviour Workshop was attended by teachers from the Orealia Kelly and Vivien Vanterpool Primary Schools. It was conducted by Tricia Campbell (a consultant), andBeryce Nixon (a school principal), from the United Kingdom. Funding was provided by the Department for International Development through the Governor’s Office and the Anguilla Government.

Mrs. Campbell, who is originally from Montserrat, where she worked with the Government on its education reforms, told The Anguillian that they were recruited to Anguilla under a project called “Safeguarding Children”. She was previously in Anguilla in December last year when she spoke with teachers and other stakeholders on how to cope with the abolition of corporal punishment.

Facilitators, Beryce Nixon and Tricia Campbell, with Teachers at workshop

“What we are looking at is putting into place positive behaviour management strategies so that the classroom can be a place where all students and teachers want to be,” Mrs. Campbell stated. “Corporal punishment has been abolished in the UK for a number of years and that’s an argument for another time as to what people feel about that. I, as an educator, having worked in a school in very challenging circumstances, don’t feel that I have ever needed to have to use corporal punishment to get the result I wanted. I think it is more about consistency of approach, fairness and children seeing that things are just. There are occasions when children step out of the boundaries but they have to know what those boundaries are; and I think that can be done in a much more positive and proactive way.”

Mrs. Campbell observed that she and her colleague had found great potential in the teachers they trained. She commented: “We got them to understand that if the teaching, learning and environment are right, there is good support from parents, good consistency, and children who understand where the boundaries are,you can have a happy and successful school.It has been absolutely brilliant working with the teachers and the fact they have given up part of their holiday to be at the workshop [is commendable]. It was a pleasure being in Anguilla.”

A press release from the Ministry of Education expressed the hope that the teachers at the workshop would be equipped with skills that would enable them to better manage student behaviour in the classroom using a variety of positive strategies.
“With the schools reopening shortly, this workshop in Positive Management is indeed timely,” the release stated. “There is no doubt that the teachers involved in the workshop would be eager to implement the behaviour strategies they learnt in an effort to make their teaching and the students’ learning more effective.”