By Emmanuel Joseph
An assessment of the social and emotional status of students and school faculty across Barbados has revealed disturbing emotional issues that stand in the way of learning, the latest public consultation on the government’s education reform plans was told.
Anger among students and exhaustion among teachers were identified as the most prominent feelings in a litany of emotional woes delivered by Tony Olton, the founder of the Caribbean Institute for Social and Emotional Learning (CISEL). He declared that the authorities would be “spinning top in mud” unless they paid attention to the social and emotional needs of teachers and students.
His findings appeared to be backed up by the ministry’s own assessment conducted this week, the consultation heard.
Appearing in the audience at Queen’s College, he told Ministry of Education officials that his organisation conducted the assessment over the past three years with principals and teachers here and in other Caribbean countries.
Olton told the forum that three questions were asked as part of the engagements: What are the emotions most prominent among students? What are the emotions most prominent among faculty? And what are the emotions necessary for learning?
Anger was followed by frustration, unstableness, disappointment, exasperation, confusion, depression, intolerance, hatred, disinterest, indifference, insecurity, sadness, and fatigue, he reported.
“I don’t care how much English you teach or Geography, learning cannot take place if those are the emotions that are predominant among students,” he said.
Among the faculty, most were tired, indifferent, frustrated, angry, disappointed, anxious, burned-out, bored, exhausted, demotivated, discouraged, and impatient, Olton added.
He said: “You have students who are turning up with what you would otherwise describe as negative emotions. You have faculty turning up who are having their own issues, and then when we asked what are the emotions that are necessary for learning to take place, the same body of respondents [said] curiosity, passion, joy, trust, happiness, contentment, optimism, excitement, concern, enthusiasm and comfort.
“This is the challenge we are really facing. How do you get faculty to turn up with a mind and spirit that is secure and is able to make connections with their students and bring passion, curiosity, happiness, focus, [and] enthusiasm?
“Until we get this right…until we treat to the human being, their emotional needs; until we help our children to become self-aware, self-motivated, self-managed to develop a greater capacity to connect with others; to understand where other people are coming from, and to think about life other than their own needs… as the old people used to say, ‘we are spinning top in mud’.
He told the panel, including Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw and Director of the Education Reform Unit Dr Idamay Denny that social and emotional learning has to be the bedrock or core of everything that is done to achieve educational transformation.
Dr Denny then revealed that the ministry had carried out two consultations among primary and secondary school students on Monday, which showed results similar to what Olton’s institute found about social and emotional issues.
She said it was discovered that children often make fun of disabled peers.
“This says to us that there is some lack of emotional security in children, and we want to get that back…because, if we can get that back, it means that the school is not going to have to work alone to help get all of the children into the place that we want to get them. Their peers are going to see themselves involved in that process as well,” Dr Denny told the audience.
She explained the ministry views the development of social and emotional skills as critical if the children are to develop into the adults that “we want them to be”.
Janet Vaughn, a retired teacher, offered a different view of the main problem facing education in Barbados, pointing to literacy issues.
“Reading is the prerequisite for equipping our children for life-long learning,” he said. “The major problem in education in Barbados today is that too many students leave primary school not being able to read. When we address that problem, everything else will fit in. We don’t have to worry about putting every subject that there is on the curriculum in primary schools.”
She also called for more attention to be paid to pre-primary education and smaller classes for Infants A and B in primary schools so that teachers are easily able to spot students who are lagging.
“I would like to suggest that for class one, you have a teaching assistant. The idea there is to spot any student who might have a little difficulty and get things moving,” Vaughn submitted.
In response to the issue of reading, Archer-Bradshaw said: “How are we going to tackle it? We know that there are some teachers who cannot teach reading. So, we have to first fix that. So, we have engaged the Erdiston Teachers Training College to offer continuous professional development workshops for our teachers, specifically focused on the teaching of reading.”
She also disclosed that an education officer has now been tasked specifically to boost reading across all primary schools.
Declaring that a culture of reading must be created within schools, the education chief indicated there are reading clubs in primary schools. Principals have also been encouraged to make reading an extracurricular activity or lunchtime event.
