Amid uncertainty and some kinks in the road, hundreds of teachers and their representative unions are fully on board for a September 21 restart of school and are ready to get “creative” as they teach the nation’s children.
The Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) and the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT), whose leaders recently chided the Ministry of Education for its handling of some aspects of the process, are now satisfied with the level of consultation that preceded Saturday’s announcement by Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw of the resumption of classes and the COVID-19 protocols that will be in place.
During her address to the nation, Bradshaw confirmed much of the information that had been floating around in the public domain about the blend of face-to-face and virtual teaching that will occur when the new school year starts.
Over the next two weeks, staff at dozens of educational institutions will be hard at work attempting to reconfigure classrooms to accommodate physical distancing, determine how staff will be deployed, and how strict COVID-19 protocols will be enforced.
Nevertheless, BSTU President Mary Redman stressed that there must be continuous assessment and no compromising of the health of either teachers or students when school restarts.
“What was most important about what the Minister said was the need for flexibility at every level by all stakeholders and the need for creativity as we move forward in what are really very fluid circumstances, and where neither Barbados nor anywhere else in the world has a fool-proof blueprint for success,” she told Barbados TODAY.
“Moving forward, we will therefore require continuous assessment of where we are at and using that same flexibility, where necessary, to make changes that we believe are needed and to make those changes quickly.”
In addition, she stressed the need for all persons on school compounds to wear masks, which is said to reduce virus transmission by up to 80 per cent, while maintaining six-foot distancing.
“We do have some concerns in relation to public transport and the extent to which there may be commingling and the implications of this, and it may have some implications for what the length of the school day may look like,” Redman added.
General Secretary of the BUT Herbert Gittens who some weeks ago requested that teachers be given an extra week to properly prepare, on Monday was resigned to the fact that the Ministry’s target dates were not subject to change.
“Initially, the union would have asked the Ministry about giving the teachers an extra week because, as I said, there is a lot of work still to be done,” he said.
“Timetabling will be a challenge because you have to fit timelines into an online situation. With a face-to-face situation, you can move from lesson to lesson, but in an online environment, you will not be able to have students on the computer right through for seven consecutive sessions, so you would now have to try to fit your timetables to suit those arrangements. That will be a bit of work to do, and then we also have to look at how best to do lunchtime supervision and things like that.”
Gittens stressed the need for all stakeholders to continue working in harmony beyond the start date, as the real test would occur when students return to the classroom.
Both unions are also eagerly awaiting the arrival of 20 000 electronic devices from Kenya to avoid isolating some students from online learning, as occurred in the early stages of Barbados’ first response to the pandemic.
They are also banking on promised training from the Ministry, for educators, on how to effectively offer online instruction.
“We have been included, we continue to be included and we are having weekly meetings. We are having meetings pertaining to the organization of the reopening and in relation to the health protocols that must be put in place at each and every school,” Redman concluded.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
