Schools Looking Within
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Green Bay Primary School, aNTIGUA
reen Bay Primary School’s new
professional learning community
(PLC) is changing the school’s
approach to reading development, and
teachers are optimistic that this will lead to
improved student achievement.
Nestled in the quiet, low socio-economic
community of Green Bay in St. John’s,
Antigua and Barbuda, the Green Bay
Primary School faces considerable
challenges.
“Right now, we are an under-performing
school in all areas, and we have been so
for a long time, even before I came here
four years ago,” pointed out principal, Mrs.
Jose Joseph. “So we had to make some
choices as to how to get our performance
up.” One of these choices was to follow
an entirely new approach to teaching
reading.
“I think the Ministry was at its wits’ end
with what is needed for us to improve,”
Mrs. Joseph disclosed, “so I went and
asked for permission for us to look at
doing things a little differently. And I got
that permission, so we are starting to
change a lot of things.”
Now Green Bay Primary School is on
a mission to improve three areas of its
operations: their students’ achievements;
the school’s curriculum instruction and
assessment; and community and family
involvement in helping with children’s
academic development at home. These
improvements are captured in a school
improvement plan that Mrs. Joseph
developed.
When Green Bay Primary successfully
applied for a reading development grant
under the Early Learners Programme
(ELP), the school decided to use the
proceeds to fund main aspects of its
school improvement plan. As Mrs. Joseph
observed, “we’re one of the ELP pilot
schools, so instead of doing something
that would take us totally off our track,
we just started implementing our own
programme that we had started before –
which is along the same line – so it wasn’t
a problem.”
At the heart of the school’s new
approach to supporting their students’
reading development is a professional
learning community or PLC within Green
Bay Primary. The PLC is the driving force
of the school’s improvement plan.
Said Mrs. Joseph: “The PLC is where
the teachers would do all the planning.
Instead of one teacher in the classroom,
a group of them come together. When
the teachers go to the PLC, they take
the samples of the students’ work; they
analyze it, get data from it; and collectively,
they decide what intervention they are
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