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Our Prior Results
Teacher Training Workshops:
TFABB’s original and continuing work has centered around one-week training workshops for Toledo’s primary-school teachers, over half of whom have no training beyond a high school degree. From a modest beginning in 1997 training 20 teachers, the teacher-training workshop has continued to grow and reached a record 258 participants in the summer of 2006. The teachers and the administrative officials see this workshop as the main training event for the teachers each year, and TFABB has come to work closely with the Ministry of Education, local supervisors, and principals to plan the workshop every August.
TFABB has organized and/or funded the teacher workshop every year since 1997, with the exception of 2005. We did not hold a teacher-training workshop in 2005 because we were initiating our training program for Toledo’s primary-school principals and planning our new literacy coaches project.
Training Local Teachers at Trainers:
In July 2006, TFABB began a three-year pilot program aiming to formalize our team approach and to solidify a core of local trainers, called literacy coaches. The annual timeline includes:
- a week-long July training workshop for the literacy coaches;
- the annual, week-long August training workshop for the rest of Toledo’s 280 primary-school teachers led by the literacy coaches partnered with North American volunteer trainers;
- three one-day, follow-up trainings for the 280 teachers led by the literacy coaches in October, February, and May.
During the last week of July 2006–the week before the larger August teacher-training workshop–TFABB held its first annual literacy coaches workshop. Sixteen experienced Belizean teachers gained coaching, leadership and training skills as well as knowledge of the balanced literacy approach. We plan to work with as many of these same coaches as possible for the three-year project.
The 16 coaches have also led two of the three one-day refresher trainings during the school year for their 280 colleagues, with the third to come in May. These three days give the teachers a chance to meet together to share ideas and strategies about what has and has not worked in their classrooms in terms of the balanced literacy approach. They immediately go back into the classroom to try the new strategies they have learned from their peers.
TFABB expects many benefits from this effort to foster local coaches. The three-year project helps to build up the impact and sustainability of the larger August training workshop. The locally led refresher trainings increase the number of training events the teachers attend each year and their accountability in implementing the training material. The program also builds up a cadre of experienced, local trainers who can perhaps replace the North American trainers in the long term.
Principal Training Workshops:
In August 2006, TFABB and the University of Belize completed a year-long training program for over 40 of Toledo’s 49 primary-school principals. This represented the first formal principal training for the majority of these individuals, many of whom also teach full time. Three-day workshops took place in August and December 2005 as well as April and August 2006. TFABB provided funding and some on-site training support.
The training program for new principals outlined the basic roles of a principal and covered the needed skills for community relations, recordkeeping, budgeting, report preparation, supervision, and facility maintenance.
While the training for new principals might be considered an introduction to the "nuts and bolts" of being a principal, the program for experienced principals encouraged these educators to formulate a grander vision for ongoing quality improvement in their schools. They developed a strategic plan for student success and learned how to mobilize school and community support behind that vision.
Donating Supplies and Books:
Back in 1997, when we held our first training workshop, lack of supplies, paper, and teaching materials was a big obstacle to the teachers we worked with. This was an ongoing source of frustration to everyone, and was primarily the result of insufficient funds.
Providing the necessary teaching supplies and educational books to support the skills developed in the annual Teacher-Training workshops is an important part of TFABB's mission. Since inception, we have purchased and donated over $80,000 worth of requested teaching supplies, materials, and books to the schools of Toledo. Additionally, we have shipped many hundreds of boxes of donate supplies and books gathered in school book drives (thousands and thousands of books gathered from teachers in St. Louis, Buffalo, Houston, and Shelbyville, TN).
School-Related Construction:
2003: Blue Creek Teachers’ House
TFABB undertook its first school-related construction project in the summer of 2003, when 31 North American volunteers traveled to Toledo to build a teachers’ house in rural Blue Creek village. The new house allows teachers posted in Blue Creek to focus on teaching and becoming part of the community, rather than a long and arduous hitchhiking commute from the town of Punta Gorda where they live.
2005-06: Santa Cruz Community Library
Fifteen U.S. volunteers spent their 2005 winter holidays in Santa Cruz, Belize, mixing mortar, sawing rebar, and laying cement blocks to help build a library for use by community members and the village’s primary school. Santa Cruz is a small village of 430 people in a remote part of Toledo, Belize’s poorest district and home to the majority of the country’s indigenous Mayan population.
The U.S. volunteers worked alongside 35 Mayan community members, who donated their time not only that week but also for several weeks before and after to lay the foundation and finish the roof. Such village involvement was especially heartening in a community that suffered from long-standing mistrust between the villagers and school personnel. A new principal, a Peace Corps volunteer, and community leaders worked hard over the prior year to rebuild trust and to unite everyone behind the project.
TFABB volunteers helped build a Library in Santa Cruz during 2006 New Year's holiday!Increased access to education is crucial in the Toledo district, where less than 15 percent of children attend high school, 52 percent of the Mayan population is illiterate, and 56 percent of the population is indigent. No child from Santa Cruz has ever graduated from high school. TFABB and the local Belizean education authorities are confident that the library–along with the newly rekindled community involvement in and excitement about the school–will play a key role in increasing the number of children in Santa Cruz who finish primary school and go to high school.
TFABB Board member Karen Cueni-Tillet and her Belizean husband Karl Tillet led the group. The U.S. volunteers ranged in age from 14 to 78 and traveled from Texas, Washington, California, Florida, South Carolina, and Indiana. One enthusiastic volunteer, Larry Cruse, raised an extra $1,800 when he returned to the U.S., allowing the villagers to build a concrete roof on the library so that it can also serve as the village’s hurricane shelter.
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