{"id":9205,"date":"2011-06-07T08:24:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T12:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=9205"},"modified":"2011-06-07T09:22:23","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T13:22:23","slug":"education-minister-seeks-beneficial-us-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2011\/06\/education-minister-seeks-beneficial-us-ties","title":{"rendered":"Education Minister Seeks Beneficial US Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Minister Bannister at McKinley Technical High School.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON, DC \u2013 While in Washington with The Bahamas delegation to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Minister of Education Desmond Bannister established initial contacts with important entities including the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), the Office of the Mayor of DC, the State Department, the Organisation of American States and the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s hope was that through partnership and collaboration with these entities, the Bahamian education system might share best practices in a number of critical areas: teacher training, the integration and effective servicing of special needs students and development of partnerships for the advancement of science and technology.<\/p>\n

Dr. Carey Wright, Chief Academic Officer of the DCPS Central Office, spoke with Mr. Bannister about DC\u2019s \u201cEffective Schools Framework.\u201d The goal of the Effective Schools Framework is to ensure that every child in every classroom has access to engaging instruction, and the programme\u2019s key elements reflect the focus areas for district reform. One of the elements of this framework is principal accountability, by which principals\u2019 effectiveness is in part measured against student achievement data.<\/p>\n

Dr. Wright and Mr. Bannister also discussed the use of \u201cinstructional coaches,\u201d professional development specialists embedded within the schools to work with specific teachers. The DCPS plan, according to Dr. Wright, was to implement this system district-wide in 2012. They also discussed the implementation of video recording of lessons as a professional development tool, mandatory offering of \u201cadvanced placement (AP)\u201d courses at each DC public school and the use of \u201cinstructional superintendents,\u201d whose job is to work with the principals and DCPS.<\/p>\n

At Mr. Bannister\u2019s instigation, they also discussed the charter school system at length. Dr. Wright confirmed that about 38 percent of DC\u2019s student population is in charter schools. She said DCPS loses many students to the charter school system \u2013 which in DC is fairly independent \u2013 in the middle school years, which meant that DCPS must focus on middle school reform and improvement as well.<\/p>\n

School Visits
\nThe minister visited three schools while in DC: Neval Thomas Elementary, West Education Campus (meaning K-8), and McKinley Technology High School.<\/p>\n

McKinley Tech is one of DCPS premier magnet schools, with hundreds of students applying for places each year. Gideon Sanders, Director of Partnerships\/Internships at the school, talked with Mr. Bannister about some of the partnerships and programmes at the school, including partnerships with Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and SMART Technologies (makers of digital blackboards for educators).<\/p>\n

In addition to the school\u2019s greenhouse \u2013 part of the biotechnology programme \u2013 the minister toured McKinley\u2019s library\/media centre, where the school is in the process of building a podcast studio, a 3-D computer modeling classroom, and a science lab, where he met and spoke with Aqueelah James, the Air Force Association\u2019s 2011 National Science Teacher of the Year.<\/p>\n

The minister also visited Neval Thomas Elementary, the school adopted by the Embassy of The Bahamas for the 2010-2011 academic year as part of the Washington Performing Arts Society\/DCPS \u201cAdopt-A-School\u201d programme. He took with him three students from The Bahamas, Samuenta Marc \u2013 Second Place Winner in the Bahamas National Spelling Bee \u2013 and Suraj Vinuraj Nair and Brittany Demeritte \u2013 who tied for Third Place.<\/p>\n

After the minister\u2019s presentation, the students questioned each other about a range of topics, from what they studied in school to how they were punished to the different climates to whether they had homework and how students advanced.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Abaco student Sujith Swarna represented The Bahamas with great distinction in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in DC, only just missing the semi-final round. The Bahamas delegation to the bee included Mrs. Eula Gaitor, Supervisor Student Services Section, Mrs. Rochelle Cox-Hill- National Spelling Bee Coach- Student Services Section, Mr. Haldane Chase \u2013 Professor College of The Bahamas, young Mr. Swarna and his parents, the runners-up and others.<\/p>\n

By K. Quincy Parker
\nPress Attach\u00e9
\nEmbassy of The Bahamas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While in Washington the Minister of Education established initial contacts with important entities with the hope that the Bahamian education system might benefit from collaborations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,40,140],"class_list":["post-9205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-educational","tag-government","tag-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}