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2008/09 Program Plan

By focusing on capacity building and support for preschool and primary teachers and schools, TFABB’s continuum of programmatic activities responds to the needs of teachers and schools in the Toledo district and fully engages Toledo’s existing resources. In our eleventh year, TFABB’s efforts will include the continuation of two linked programs that are entering the third year of a three-year cycle (July 2006-June 2009): 1) Training Toledo’s Preschool and Primary-School Teachers; and 2) Training Teachers as Literacy Coaches for Their Peers.

Program One: Training Toledo’s Preschool and Primary-School Teachers

1A: August Teacher-Training Workshop (The Centerpiece of Our Work for Eleven Years)

August Primary Teachers’ Workshop: TFABB will use teams of North American and Belizean trainers to provide a five-day teacher-training workshop in August 2008 improving skills in using the balanced literacy approach to teaching reading and writing for at least 270 of the 296 teachers and teacher-principals from Toledo’s 49 primary schools.

TFABB’s original and continuing work has centered around a week-long training workshop held each August for Toledo’s primary-school teachers, over half of whom have no training beyond a high school degree. This year will mark the eleventh teacher-training workshop that TFABB has helped organize and/or fund in Toledo. Teachers and administrative officials see the TFABB August workshop as a crucial piece of the professional development program for Toledo’s teachers each year. Toledo’s supervisors require the teachers to attend three weeks of summer training–instead of the two weeks the Ministry provides in other districts–because they value TFABB’s workshop so highly. TFABB has come to work closely with the Ministry of Education, local supervisors, and principals to plan the workshop. In the last two years, TFABB has also met and cooperated with the Chief Education Officer for the country (in the capital city) to ensure that our workshop fits into the national education plan.

TFABB is committed to supporting the development of a strong cadre of local teacher trainers. To this end, 20 of Toledo’s primary-school teachers have been selected to participate in a skills-building training the week before the larger teacher-training workshop. At the smaller, earlier workshop, these 20 educators will gain coaching, leadership, and training skills, as well as more in-depth knowledge of the balanced literacy approach to teaching reading and writing. They will then serve as trainers during the August teacher-training workshop, alongside 10 visiting North American volunteers, and also lead three one-day, follow-up trainings during the school year. (See the section below entitled, "Program Two: Training Teachers as Literacy Coaches for Their Peers" for a full description of this program.)

We estimate that approximately 270 Toledo teachers will attend the August teacher-training workshop, in addition to the 20 local teachers (literacy coaches) who will serve as trainers. This number also includes most of the principals from Toledo’s 49 primary schools, because the majority of principals are also full-time teachers. Although the Ministry of Education requires all of Toledo’s 296 primary teachers to attend this workshop, typically several teachers are excused from the workshop to attend summer school or other training events outside of the district.

The August 2008 all-teacher workshop will build on the many improvements introduced in the 2006 and 2007 August workshops (the first two years of our three-year cycle), most notably the sharpened focus on language arts (reading and writing). From 1997-2004, TFABB’s workshop offered strategies for teaching math, language arts, science and various other subjects. In the fall of 2005, TFABB representative Janice Achtem–an educator in British Columbia, Canada–spent three months living in Toledo to collect information for her doctoral dissertation on teacher training in the district. Her many in-depth interviews with Toledo teachers, administrators, and TFABB’s Belizean Subcommittee highlighted the value and impact of the August workshop. Teachers expressed high regard for the workshop in terms of quality and content, but expressed some sense of being overwhelmed by the amount of information provided. They suggested that the workshop focus on one subject each year, rather than trying to tackle language arts, math, science, and other subjects at once.

To this end, for the current three-year project (2006-09), TFABB is focusing its workshops solely on a balanced literacy approach to language arts, because reading and writing are the foundation for success in all other subjects. The focus on language arts addresses some of the main obstacles Toledo’s children face in finishing and continuing beyond primary school. Increasing literacy in reading and writing is especially important in a district where most children are not exposed to English before they reach school, and where there is no bilingual education (all teaching is supposed to take place in English). Lack of English ability and the concurrent superficial grasp of reading and writing in the early grades play a role in many of Toledo’s educational ills, including: frequent repeating of early primary grades (including one-quarter of all first-year students), frequent dropping out in the upper primary grades, poor performance on the national high school admission test, and ultimately the low number of Toledo’s adolescents who attend high school.

The balanced literacy approach encourages a teacher to focus on the individual learning needs of each student by incorporating relevant activities from many reading instruction philosophies–even from philosophies that are often at the opposite end of polarizing debates, such as the "phonics" versus "whole language" debate. A teacher implementing the balanced literacy approach informally yet constantly assesses each individual student’s needs and level, and then tailors the ensuing lessons (in the following week, for example) to respond to those needs. Because the approach involves some extra planning and flexibility on the teacher’s part, the TFABB workshop spends a good deal of time helping Toledo’s teachers strengthen their lesson planning skills. The balanced literacy approach is well-suited to several of Toledo’s more demanding teaching situations, most notably the high percentage of English language learners in the early grades as well as the multi-grade classrooms in over half of the region’s schools. The focus on each child’s individual learning needs in reading and writing is imperative in these classrooms with highly divergent levels among the pupils.

The August 2008 workshop will continue and deepen the focus on the balanced literacy approach. As we are entering the third year of our three-year plan, 2008 will also be a year in which we evaluate this three-year project and design the next one (July 2009-June 2012). For example, we will assess whether to continue the focus of the workshop on language arts and/or begin to address another subject in depth, such as mathematics. We are beginning conversations with the International Education Program at Stanford University as well as local education consultants in Belize about the design of our three-year evaluation.

Another improvement introduced in the current three-year plan includes a harmonizing of the training across all grade levels. In previous years (before 2006), the trainers in each subject and at each grade level chose their own approaches and topics. In 2006, all of the trainers began using the same balanced literacy approach and terminology at all grade levels. Each day of the five-day workshop has a theme for reading and a theme for writing. The daily theme is the same for all grade levels. For example, the five daily themes for writing in August 2006 included one step of the writing process each day: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and celebrating (presenting). The writing trainers at various levels taught the appropriate balanced literacy content regarding that theme for that grade level, while at the same time weaving in the six traits of writing (ideas, organizing, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions) throughout the week.

Having everyone use the same approach and terminology has many benefits. First, Toledo’s teachers frequently switch grade levels year after year. If they understand the balanced literacy approach at one level, they can implement it at another level. Second, a successful implementation of the balanced literacy approach requires the support of principals and managers. Since most principals are also teachers and are receiving the same training, principals can support this new approach throughout their schools.

August Preschool Teachers’ Workshop: TFABB will pair up a North American and a Belizean trainer to provide a five-day teacher-training workshop in August 2008 focusing on the basic tenets of early childhood education and the new Belizean preschool curriculum for at least 15 of Toledo’s 20 preschool teachers from Toledo’s 12 preschools.

For most of TFABB’s eleven-year existence, the Toledo region has not had preschools in the rural areas. There have been three preschools in the region’s only town of Punta Gorda for many years, which of course served a very small percentage of the region’s young children. Lack of access to preschool has played a role in the many obstacles facing Toledo’s older children, including their struggles to learn English, keep up with their national counterparts, and indeed avoid dropping out of primary school due to frequent repeating of grades. In the last three years, the Belizean government has made a concerted push to bring preschool to all Belizean children, including a new national preschool curriculum. The number of preschools in Toledo has skyrocketed from three to 12, with a plan to add three more each year. We are optimistic that each of the district’s 40 villages will one day have a preschool to help prepare their children for success in primary school and beyond.

As TFABB has long seen the need for preschool access in Toledo’s rural areas, we were eager to begin working with the region’s growing population of preschool teachers. In 2007, we added preschool training to our week-long August workshop. We will continue this training in 2008 and beyond. In 2008, our U.S. early education specialist will join with Toledo’s newly appointed and first-ever regional preschool director to present the week-long training.

1B: Book and Supply Distribution (Reinforcing the Training Messages)

TFABB will provide language arts resource books, storybooks, and related visual aids to Toledo’s 296 primary-school teachers, and distribute donated storybooks and other items to several of Toledo’s rural schools.

In our early years, based on needs assessments, TFABB purchased and obtained via donation thousands of dollars worth of school supplies and distributed these among Toledo’s 49 primary schools. The majority of our donations comprised storybooks to build up school libraries and thus students’ English language skills. Thanks in large part to TFABB, each school now has a library with several hundred books. After closing in on our initial goal of building up school libraries and based on more recent feedback from teachers, beginning in 2003 we focused purchases on teacher resource books to give teachers new ideas for classroom activities. This approach more intricately links and strengthens our workshop and supply purchases. At the annual workshops in 2003 and 2004, every teacher received three books linked to the language arts, math, and science activities shared in the workshops.

Beginning in 2006, to complement our focus on language arts, we chose books to bolster our efforts to use the same approach and terminology at all levels. Each of the 258 teachers attending in 2006 received six books: two textbooks outlining the balanced literacy approach (one for reading and one for writing) as well as four culturally appropriate storybooks that illustrate and reinforce the concepts. All teachers in the four lower primary grades received the same six books, while all of those in the four upper primary grades received a different set of six books. The reading resource book for the upper primary grades is the continuation of the resource book for the lower primary grades, with the same being true for the two writing resource books. As with using the same approach and terminology at all levels, using resource books that flow from one to the other by level helps teachers when they switch from level to level and helps principals who are teaching at one level support their supervisees teaching at other levels.

We will continue to use the same resource books for the duration of this three-year project, thus reinforcing the concepts while at the same time saving on book expenditures. We will organize book swaps among teachers who have switched levels. We will need to purchase the existing resource books for new teachers, however, and we may add supplemental resource books. We will definitely buy new storybooks for each teacher every year. It is important for each teacher to build up a classroom storybook library both for "read aloud" time and "read alone" time. This is a fun but important way to expose children to and improve their grasp of the English language, which they need to succeed in the Belizean system. Beyond promoting strength in reading, the storybooks are also chosen for their illustrations of writing style as well. In 2008, we hope to provide each primary teacher with six more storybooks. We are usually successful in getting some of these books and other items donated or heavily discounted from publishers.

During the workshop we will also provide each teacher with visual aids such as classroom posters that highlight the balanced literacy approach. Of course, we plan to provide the preschool teachers with books as well. We continue to solicit free storybooks, sports equipment, and other donations to distribute to schools, especially the most remote and under-resourced schools.

Program Two: Training Teachers as Literacy Coaches for Their Peers

(Fostering Local Capacity and Sustainability)

TFABB will train 20 seasoned Toledo teachers to serve as peer literacy coaches, who volunteer as mentors and resources for fellow educators, and who will lead three language arts training sessions for their 276 colleagues during the school year (in February, May, and October).

Over the last 11 years, TFABB has increasingly worked to build the capacity of local Belizean teachers as trainers. During the first few workshops, U.S. volunteer teachers organized and presented the bulk of the sessions at each workshop. Over time, Belizean counterparts joined in the planning, and several led workshop sessions. As the workshop grew, TFABB developed a more collaborative albeit informal system that included pairing North American and Belizean teachers who team-taught each session. This approach maximized contributions from both groups and deepened the cross-cultural component of our work. The Belizeans have in-depth knowledge of the local education system, student population, and years of teaching experience in Toledo’s vastly under-resourced and overcrowded classrooms, but generally have less experience as teacher trainers. The North American teachers bring experience in training as well as familiarity with cooperative learning and other child-centered pedagogical techniques that are especially useful in overcrowded, multi-grade, and under-resourced classrooms.

Solidifying a core of local trainers and formalizing this team approach through the three-year literacy coaches pilot project (begun in July 2006) has enhanced the effectiveness and sustainability of the August teacher-training workshop, while at the same time increasing overall educational leadership in Toledo. The components of the program include a timeline each school year of: 1) a July training workshop for 20 literacy coaches; 2) the annual August training workshop for all teachers led by the literacy coaches partnered with North American volunteers; and 3) three one-day, follow-up trainings led by the coaches in October, February, and May.

Most of the literacy coaches set to participate in 2008 have served as coaches for the past two years, which has helped us to solidify a strong and sustainable pool of local trainers.

The August workshop in 2008 will deepen TFABB’s focus on balanced literacy, as will the three one-day refresher workshops held during the school year (for a total of nine refresher workshops over the three-year project.) These three days throughout the school year give the teachers a chance 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 in to the classroom to try the new strategies they have learned from their peers. This professional development opportunity is unprecedented in Belize; TFABB’s three training days held during the 2006-07 school year marked the very first time that all teachers in the district gathered for training sessions during the school year. The other five Belizean districts are expressing interest in this model as well.

TFABB foresees many long-term benefits from this effort to foster local literacy coaches. The three-year pilot project helps to build up the impact and sustainability of the larger August teacher-training workshop. This effort heightens a culture and an expectation of professional growth in the local teaching profession by increasing the number of training events the teachers attend each year and their accountability in implementing new teaching material. The program also builds up a cadre of experienced, local trainers who may replace the North American trainers altogether in the long term. Overall, this effort widens and deepens educational leadership and training ability throughout district with the goal of further enhancing teacher knowledge and skills, and thus student success, district-wide.

In conclusion, the following improvements introduced at the workshop in the 2006-09 cycle, along with the addition of the literacy coaching program and refresher trainings, have taken TFABB’s work to a new level and demonstrate we are solidly placed to continue our impact in our second decade:

EVALUATION

At the end of each workshop, TFABB will collect qualitative oral feedback and written evaluations from the Belizean participants. TFABB’s evaluation activities seek to measure the extent to which TFABB:

As mentioned, in the coming 12-18 months, TFABB will evaluate its current three-year project model in order to feed into the design of the next three-year cycle that will begin in July 2009. Also, one of TFABB’s U.S. volunteers, who is a professor at Baylor University, is undertaking a research project to summarize and analyze the participant evaluations of the August and refresher trainings to look at trends over time.

2008-09 Timeline: May 2008 - May 2009 (correlated to the 2008 budget).

Date Activity Leaders
(Organizers and Implementers)		 Activity # of Trainees Funding
Source*
May 28-29, 2008

(2-days)		 3 TFABB North American trainers and 1 Peace Corps volunteer 1) Two-day training to provide guidance on integrating the new curriculum, new textbooks, fast phonics, and the balanced literacy approach in language arts. Approx 80: All Toledo managers, principals, coaches, Peace Corps volunteers, and UB trainers TFABB
Wed Jul 30- Fri Aug 1, 2008

(3-days)		 2-3 TFABB North American Trainers 2) Three-day training in which the Toledo literacy coaches will gain additional coaching, leadership, and training capacity, as well as more in-depth knowledge of how to implement the balanced literacy approach in conjunction with the new curriculum, new textbooks, and fast phonics. 20 Toledo literacy coaches TFABB
Mon-Fri, Aug 4-8, 2008

(5-days)		 20 Toledo Literacy Coaches and 11 North American Trainers 3) One-week teacher-training workshop for all Toledo primary teachers focused on how to implement the balanced literacy approach in conjunction with the new curriculum, new textbooks, and fast phonics. Approximately 300 Toledo primary-school teachers and principals TFABB, workshop participants, Ministry
Oct 30, 2008

(1-day)		 20 Toledo Literacy Coaches 4) Full-day training to provide review, practice, and a more in-depth look at the content provided in the one-week August 2008 balanced literacy workshop Approximately 300 Toledo primary-school teachers/principals TFABB
Feb 26, 2009

(1-day)		 20 Toledo Literacy Coaches 5) Full-day training to provide review, practice, and a more in-depth look at the content provided in the one-week August 2008 balanced literacy workshop Approximately 300 Toledo primary-school teachers/principals TFABB
May 28, 2009**

(1-day)		 20 Toledo Literacy Coaches 6) Full-day training to provide review, practice, and a more in-depth look at the content provided in the one-week August 2008 balanced literacy workshop Approximately 300 Toledo primary-school teachers/principals TFABB

* Funding is in addtion to the volunteer time of all involved. The Roman Catholic Management also provides some in-kind support during all training events (for example, by allowing the use of the Parish Hall free of charge.)

** In 2008, the TFABB Literacy Coaches felt that perhaps the May in-service event was not necessary because it was only four weeks before the end of the school year. We will determine whether the May 2009 in-service training for all teachers is necessary as the time approaches.


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