Learning’s new paradigm
BROWN’S Town Community College principal James Walsh and his teaching staff could easily have sat back and continued to bask in self-satisfaction that their students’ exam passes were averaging 80 per cent. The problem with that, though, said Walsh, was that the grades weren’t good enough.
“We just weren’t satisfied with the quality of the passes,” Walsh told the Sunday Observer. “For instance, with the A’ Levels and CAPE, a lot of people were passing, but they weren’t getting As and Bs. The majority were getting between C and D.”
That, however, wasn’t the only reason for the worry lines creasing the teaching staff’s foreheads. Walsh explained: “When we looked at the lower levels, that is, the people who went to high school and didn’t do well, and who can’t get into a genuine tertiary institution and so come here essentially to complete their high school education, to repeat… abysmal. No better than the high school rates of passes.”
A review conducted by the community college’s officials, also revealed that those students who did well at high school would continue to do as well — or even better — at the college. But the ones who did badly at the secondary level would continue to do badly at Brown’s Town.
The trend, said Walsh, suggested that it was not the teachers nor the school that were the missing factors for success. It was the students.
“Most students who go through high school and fail don’t lack ability,” argued Walsh, “and the schools — for instance, the schools in this area, Westwood, St Hilda’s, York Castle — don’t lack good teachers.
“What is wrong,” he said, “is the students’ attitudes and output of work, both in terms of quantity and quality. Most of them fail because they don’t work well, they don’t work enough.”
With that in mind, Walsh, his staff and students formulated and agreed to what they call a ‘Covenant for Success’, which is basically a contract setting out the guidelines and parameters within which the student body, the administration and teachers operate for the proper functioning of the institution.
The covenant, believed to be the first of its kind by a Jamaican school, is signed by a representative of the students, teachers and administration.
It has been implemented as a pilot and outlines the preventative and corrective measures that can be taken by the parties signatory to the agreement. In addition, a review committee has been appointed to meet, discuss and examine the operation of the institution as it relates to the covenant.
“We are trying to become what is called a learning college,” explained Walsh, who described the covenant as part of the institution’s drive to provide a holistic education package.
“In other words, we are trying to make a transition to a new paradigm where the focus is not so much on instruction and administration, which is what imperceptibly you tend to start to do, but on learning,” he told the Sunday Observer. “When we start to look at things through that prism, every time we say ‘well, this is what we are going to do’, we ask ourselves, is this the best way to support, to facilitate learning? That’s the kind of paradigm that we are trying to move towards.”
Hermalyn Reid-Simon, the college’s dean of admissions, explained how the pact works. “What the covenant aims to do is to help the students in the transition,” she said. “In high school they are really treated as children, particularly those coming from the boarding institutions. They are told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. There, they don’t have a choice but to go to class or else someone will come for them. When they come here, they don’t have that sort of thing. There is no bell to indicate that one session has ended and the other has started, you need to keep track of that for yourself. The transition, therefore, takes a while for them to get into the idea that all of a sudden they are responsible for themselves, and for their success or failure. We do not make it our business to police them, but it is our business to prepare students to the point where if they go on to university or to the working world, they will know what is expected of them.”
According to Sharon Bramwell-Lalor, dean of studies at the college, the covenant is about changing cultures.
“We hope that the students themselves will begin to see learning as more oriented towards themselves and their own efforts rather than being totally teacher dependent,” she said. “We are coming out of the era when learning is seen as teachers transmitting knowledge totally to students. We want students to take more responsibility. The college will provide the facilities, the conditions, the materials, and while we will assist as much as possible, we also want the students to see learning as their responsibility.”
That responsibility is declared in the very first point of the students’ agreement: “I am responsible for my education…,” it states.
The agreement also includes promises to be honest and to maintain integrity, to attend at least 90 per cent of classes punctually, to work hard, and to complete and submit assignments on time.
For its part, the college has committed to providing:
* qualified staff who will attend classes on time;
* opportunities for students to appraise their lecturers and to express their opinions about the quality of service; and
* facilities, course outlines and general timetables within a specified period.
So far, the covenant has the support of many students on campus.
“I think it’s a good thing,” said Andrew Wilds, a first-year arts and social sciences student who is also vice-president of the students’ union.
“If it is done properly, with all the right checks and balances to make sure that everybody — including teachers — stick to their part of the bargain, then it will be effective. If they (the faculty or administration) mess up we can point it out to them, and likewise, they can point out things to us.”
Others agree.
“It gives us a voice as students in the running of the school in a way, but it also holds us to doing our part,” said one second-year associate degree candidate.
“But boy,” she added pensively, “I think the 90 per cent of all classes might be a little hard. But knowing that everybody is going to agree to do their job makes me want to try.”
That level of student enthusiasm has been noticed by Velma Christie, who lectures in English Language, Literature and Communications. “They (students) seem more alert, interested in what is happening and willing to work hard,” she told the Sunday Observer.
“I think the whole idea of getting students and teachers to sign something and then to live up to it is a significant step, because it helps us better define our goals, both for the institution and for ourselves,” she said.
The lecturers’ covenant, a seven-point agreement, requires teachers to:
* value time;
* have high expectations for, and encourage students;
* return assignments on time;
* be enthusiastic and creative in teaching; and
* allocate time outside the classroom for consultation with students.
“The students, I think, were particularly excited by the fact that there is a similar document to be signed on behalf of the lecturers and the college,” said Bramwell-Lalor.
“What they see now is that there are expectations and responsibilities on all sides. We’re all in this together, so if there is anything that is breached on the part of the college or the lecturers, there will be some sort of avenue to express discontent, and it will not be automatically assumed that the student is at fault,” she said.
Information Minister Senator Burchell Whiteman is more than impressed with the covenant. “I think it’s excellent, a really and truly excellent thing,” he told the Sunday Observer.
According to Whiteman, himself a former minister of education, during his time in the education ministry, a proposal to have a similar arrangement — a ‘tripartite contract’ among parents, students and schools — was submitted but did not gain traction.
“Then, only a few schools implemented it, because I think there was a little reluctance,” he said. “Perhaps people didn’t feel they could live up to their side of the contract. Clearly, the college has got its staff to buy into this, and I expect that their hiring and admissions practices will now include some commitment to the covenant so that people will know what is expected of them.”
Whiteman, a former teacher and the founding principal of Brown’s Town Community College, expressed his pleasure with the institution’s leadership, saying that the covenant was an example of the positive values and attitudes the Government is trying to inculcate.
“It’s all about standards — communication of what the standards are, and commitment to achieving those standards,” he said.
Whiteman’s high praise for the covenant, though, can be extended to the college in general, given its record of discipline. “We only have about two fights a year,” said principal Walsh. “Our major problems are praedial larceny from the school’s farm and cars that drive up to the classrooms during lectures playing loud music.”
The facilities, though they could be improved tremendously, are adequate, he said, pointing to the library, which he described as “one of the most comprehensive and advanced in rural Jamaica”. He also boasted about the college’s state-of-the-art computer lab, an unintentional gift from the Government’s abandoned INTEC programme for the local HEART/NTA vocational school.
The discipline and facilities aside, Brown’s Town Community College has, in its 28 years of existence, earned a well-respected reputation for high examination pass rates and graduate enrolment in university.
In 1975, when the college started classes at the old Servite Convent (now the main campus), it did so with the intention to centralise the sixth forms of the many secondary schools located in the town, described by many as northern Jamaica’s unofficial education hub.
From an initial class of 125 students, the college today has over 900 students on register in vocational, A’ Level, CAPE, associate, and bachelors’ programmes on three campuses. Nursing courses are also taught at the newly-opened St Ann’s Bay campus; technical and vocational courses at the Runaway Bay campus; while academic courses are taught at the main campus.
The response to the covenant has encouraged the college to widen its reach. So, starting in the next academic year, all new students, as well as all faculty and administrative staff, will be required to read and sign the agreement individually as a condition for matriculation.
“We want to make the covenant institutionalised,” explained Reid-Simon. “At the beginning of each school year, we have each applicant come in for an interview. There, at that interview, they will have a chance to read the document and have it explained to them before they sign, so that they appreciate the seriousness of the agreement.”
Reid-Simon believes that once it is made part of the process, the students will have a better understanding of their purpose and will adopt a mature approach to their studies.
“They will realise that we are serious about education,” she said, “and hopefully they will stop believing that because they have paid all their fees then it is OK for them to come and do as they please.”
For the moment, though, the pilot has instilled hope in the teachers, students and the college administration that it will truly make a difference.
“I plan to stick to it, and I see that some of the teachers have been really trying, so in the end I guess we will see,” said Terri-Jo Brooks, a first-year arts and social sciences student.
“Apart from exam results,” said Bramwell-Lalor, “the college hopes to see improvements of a less quantifiable nature. We hope to see improvements all around — in terms of attitude, in classroom behaviour, and in the students’ own approach to their assignments, that they will take more interest, even without being prompted.”
Added a teacher at the college’s main campus in Brown’s Town: “I look forward to passing students on the corridors and hearing some of the discussions they are holding being centred around what they are learning.”