Approximately 30 individuals have been enrolled in phase one of the HEART/NSTA Trust’s ‘Teach for HEART’ programme since its launch in July.

Developed to respond to the large number of teachers who have been exiting the classrooms, HEART/NSTA’s managing director, Dr Taneisha Ingleton, told JIS News that “we have been affected and we couldn’t sit back”.

“We had to do something to ensure that we are capacitated, and so our National Training Programmes Division quickly conceptualised the initiative and took it through its various stages for approval,” she further informed.

Dr Ingleton said the initiative aims to ensure that HEART can provide qualified, trained and skilled instructors for the classrooms.

“We have a scaffolding system where with every instructor that we have on board, there is a demonstrator who would go to the various classrooms, [and] observe the instructors as they teach and learn on the job,” she explained.

Dr Ingleton further indicated that the initiative is designed to ensure that demonstrators are equipped with the technical and academic skills needed to be well-rounded teachers.

“We have recognised that they may have the technical competencies, but they do not have the professional qualification and the pedagogical piece that is very important in teaching and learning. So, the Teach for HEART initiative is designed to ensure that whilst they are building on the technical competencies needed to deliver, we’re also building on the pedagogy,” she said.

Over the next two years, the 30 enrolled individuals will be taken through an advanced programme to build on those skills, so that they can take over from the instructors they would have shadowed or go into a new area given that they now have that pedagogical skill, the managing director pointed out.

“We do not just have our demonstrators observing but we take them through a very strategic, direct targeted programme to bring them up to the level of a full teacher with the professional qualifications to really respond to our training needs,” she underscored.

Dr Ingleton indicated that the programme has, so far, been going extraordinarily well” adding that “we’re very, very pleased with the outcome”.