TEACHERS’ Day 2002 will be remembered by staff at Holy Trinity High School and students of Grade 7R, in particular, who had a new mathematics teacher yesterday.

Their new teacher was minister of education, Burchell Whiteman, who joined several groups islandwide, including corporate bodies, parents and students, in paying tribute to teachers for their service to the nation.

But while elsewhere teachers were feted at luncheons and concerts, some receiving corsages, gifts other awards, Whiteman said he chose to teach, because he wanted to identify with the challenges teachers were facing and offer encouragement.

He was not alone. Several other government ministers took a class yesterday, including mining and energy minister, Anthony Hylton, who taught students at Seaforth High School in St Thomas, in response to a challenge issued by Prime Minister P J Patterson last Tuesday, that government ministers spend some time in the classroom during Education Week.

“To have the minister here teaching is history in the making,” principal of the recently upgraded Holy Trinity, Monica Schroeter, told the Observer.

But his was no sudden visit, she said. In the last year Whiteman had spoken at the school’s PTA, toured the grounds and “kept in general contact” with the school.

Days before his classroom appearance the minister had called to request information on the lesson he needed to prepare for the class.

Dressed immaculately in a mauve long sleeve shirt, matching pants and tie, Whiteman appeared well able to meet the challenge, although he admitted afterward that he had not taught since 1989, when he was principal of Brown’s Town Teachers’ College.

The 30 eager youngsters before him, however, were quite unlike the young adults of the Brown’s Town college.

This group of first formers was also one that would not have been the first choice of most teachers.

They were not among the high scorers from the Grade Six Achievement Test and nearly all of the students lived in one of the violence-prone innercity communities of Kingston, including Tel Aviv, Southside and Dunkirk.

Whiteman’s subject choice, too, would not have been an ideal one for many. Mathematics, still has the highest failure rate among all CXC subjects, with close to 60 per cent failing both the June exams and resits, in Jamaica and the region. However, Whiteman said that math was a subject he enjoyed.

The classroom was swept and chairs arranged in a way that most of the students faced each other. The students each had a tag with their first names pinned to their chest, they appeared studious, and for the entire hour and a half were silent, except for the occasional, polite responses to questions, which they answered correctly most of the time.

Whiteman’s lesson was ‘probability’, which he chose because it was the next topic in a series on Statistics, that the 7R mathematics teacher, Phillip Walters, had started weeks before.

Whiteman started with a test. He wrote four questions on the blackboard, as a means of determining just how much they knew, before he started the subject.

What followed for the next hour and a half would have made a teacher examiner proud.

Whiteman employed many of the skills which he has been publicly advocating and encouraging teachers to use in the classroom, for years:

* There were words of encouragement and reassurance: “I’m not in a hurry, take your time” and “everybody is going to get 100% on this test”.

* There was limited use of chalk and blackboard and extensive use of accessible visual aids, such as coloured paper clips, dice and small coins.

* The class was invited to participate. In one such instance three sets of students threw coins to see how many times they would land on heads or tails. At another instance the whole class took turns throwing dice.

* There was good-natured humour: “Please don’t tell your parents the minister of education came here and taught you gambling.”

* And an occasional trivia: “They say in any group of 30 people or so the chances are you would find two people with the same birth date.” He was right. The class had two pupils born on September 22.

* There was application to real life: “Some things in life are certain. The sun will rise and set tomorrow. Other things we’re not so sure.”

* And sport: “Who won the toss in the first test match (Carl Hooper)?” In spinning the toss only two things will happen, either you will call heads or call tails.”

Whiteman ended with a recap of the points he made.

In the end everyone came out a winner. “I learnt about probability,” said 12 year-old Vanessa Samms. “It was great,” said Craig Townsend, also 12.

Whiteman, too, appeared pleased.

“This is an excellent class, full of life,” he said afterward.

“In fact I was very impressed that they were very near the end of the curriculum for this year and as we are in the second week of May that speaks very well about the progress of the school,” he said.

Schroeter said their form teacher, Beverly Gregory, deserved much of the credit for the normally well-behaved class.

Gregory who said she maintained a close relationship with each of her students said she was happy at the outcome.

“They don’t like it when I get too upset,” she said.