Students who are actively engaged and who are able to contribute meaningfully to school life are rarely involved in negative behaviours.
Education Officer, Kaylene Kellman-Holder, stressed this yesterday, as she addressed the graduation ceremony for students who successfully completed the Schools??? Positive Behaviour Management Programme (SPBMP) course in Adolescent Media Training at The St. Michael School.
The course was hosted last year by the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation and UNICEF. Mrs. Kellman-Holder said: ???By becoming involved in the SPBMP, therefore, schools are likely to move one step closer to being zones of peace and productivity.???
She said the SPBMP was not only for so-called ???bad schools??? as all schools in Barbados were good schools and benefited from a cadre of well-educated and trained teachers, though some schools experienced more challenges than others.
???By embracing these three principles of inclusiveness, child-centredness and democratic participation, good schools have become better schools,??? the education official said.
Pointing out that the training was based on the principle of democratic participation, she added that when persons actively participated in the life of the school, the climate of the school, and ultimately the success of the school improved.
Forty-five students attended the training which allowed them to identify media strategies for disseminating positive information in the schools, manipulate hardware for recording messages, articulate views on current issues related to the rights of the child and analyse video messages.
They were also able to create dramatic presentations related to the rights of the child and some of those presentations were shown during the ceremony.??The students were drawn from 14 public and four private secondary schools, with one participant coming from St. Lucia.
joy-ann.gill@barbados.gov.bb