FORTY-SEVEN teachers recently graduated with a Master of Science degree in Educational Leadership, from Central Connecticut State University, at a ceremony held at the Wyndham Rose Hall Hotel in Montego Bay, St James.

The programme is offered locally through Sam Sharpe Teachers College, and the number of Jamaicans who have earned this degree since the programme started in 1999 now stands at 160.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Cecile Walden, principal of the college, said the continuation of the post-graduate degree was testimony to the success of the programme, which had proven beneficial to both the university and Sam Sharpe Teachers College. She encouraged the graduates to use their achievements to the benefit of others, particularly the children they taught.

She also urged the graduates to show appreciation to family, friends and the private sector institutions that supported them through their studies.

Jamaica Teachers Association regional officer, Evelyn Tugwell, also commended the Central Connecticut State University degree programme, noting that it was helping to lift the standard of education in Jamaica. She, too, challenged the graduates to be grateful to those who helped and stood by them, and to strive to make a difference at their schools, to their students and to their peers.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Department of Educational Leadership at Central Connecticut University, Dr Anthony Rigazio Digilio, said that he looked forward to the day when the forerunners in the programme would be teaching the courses in the graduate programme in Jamaica. He noted that there was a paradigm shift in education, with the emphasis now on providing leadership to help students learn, instead of the old system of just teaching whether they learn or not.

According to Dr Digilio, while in the past the emphasis was on access to education, in the future, it could no longer be left up to the individual student to make the choice. Instead, he said, teachers have to be motivators as well as educators.

“No longer can blame for failure be put on the student, the parent, the system or the past teachers, we have to look at ourselves, we have to look at the strategies we are using in our classrooms day in and day out, and for which students they are working and for which they are not,” said Digilio.