One-size-fits-all curriculum not fair to students
Principal of the Erdiston Teachers’ Training College, Barbara Parris (centre, sitting) with the top students in the various programmes.
By:
Patricia Thangaraj
It is not that certain students are dumb, it’s just that they learn differently.
This is one of the messages that Dawn Taylor, a teacher at St. George Secondary School, is sending out to Barbadians.
“I teach in a school where students need that extra help. Not that they are dumb – because that is what people think – it is that they learn differently. And we have this idea that when we talk about a special needs student, we are talking about somebody that looks different; [but] that speaks different to what we see every day.”
Therefore, it is unfair to expect all of the students to perform at the same level, Taylor lamented.
“You cannot expect then for the same curriculum to be followed in the same manner for all students. That is my biggest pet peeve as a teacher because…you are asking teachers to backflip and work miracles and the pressure that is on teachers in this current day [is tremendous] – but people [have to] understand what teachers work with.”
Michael Toppin, a teacher at Darryl Jordan Secondary School agreed.
“Students that are coming from primary school into secondary school have different abilities and we can’t necessarily try to have the same thing for everyone. We need to be able to provide a system of education that allows students to have their individual needs met,” he said.
Taylor added that if Barbados is going to boast of a high literacy rate, then they must ensure that everybody is on board.
“We say that we have a literacy rate of 99.7 per cent. Now that .3 is a lot more than you think it is.…We have students who move from primary school into secondary school not knowing things that you would not dare imagine that they don’t know, and we expect them to follow the same curriculum in the same way that all the others do.”
This is where research comes in.“So we must then provide some type of channel, some type of research, where teachers can then feel as if they are empowered to meet the students’ needs. I think that my biggest issue is to sit in a classroom where students have challenges and I can’t meet their needs because I have special needs children in a regular school setting expecting them to do the same thing.”
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