7 News Belize

Teachers Going Online For Professional Development
posted (April 29, 2020)
Teachers are also being asked to make the necessary adjustment to online portals for important matters within their profession. One such area is continuous professional development or CPD for short. These are training courses that all teachers must complete. They are expected to have a minimum amount of CPD hours to qualify for their teaching licenses. Just in time for the State of Emergency, the Ministry has developed 2 courses which, if completed, will earn teachers a total of 50 CPD hours toward their licenses. Here's what the Deputy Chief Education Officer had to say about these courses and the fact that several thousand teachers have already signed up to take advantage of the opportunity:

Dr. Neulin Villanueva - Deputy Chief Education Officer, MOE
"For the most part, although at the secondary level, a lot of our teachers would be engaged with student learning, at the primary level, it's not so much. And so, what we've asked teachers to do is to use this opportunity to gain continuing professional development hours. As you know, our teachers with full licenses are required to do 120 hours of CPD within a 5-year period. And so, this is an opportunity to focus on that. And, I'm very excited to share that the Ministry has actually developed a number of online CPD courses. They're 2 right now that we're advertising. There is one called Thriving in Uncertain Times, that I'm really excited about. It says making your wellbeing a priority. And what that will cover is several areas of wellness: mental, emotional, physical, and financial. And so, we have some really excellent coordinators who are collaborating with us. We have Jeremy Enriquez, who is a mindfulness coach, who will be leading that session on mental wellness. We have Mrs. Krysta Courtney, who is a mental health counselor, who will be looking at emotional wellness. We have Farah Marchand, who is a Sagicor Insurance advisor, and she'll be doing the financial aspect. And we have a power team of Miss Karen Rosito, who is a fitness instructor and nutritionist, and Sean Kuylen, the chef, who will be looking at physical wellness. So, I'm very excited about that. And the other course is on digital learning, and we have two of our local instructors, Mr. Hector Castellanos from Belmopan Comprehensive, and Mr. Luis Underwood, who - I think he's from Ladyville Technical High School. [I'm] sorry if I got that wrong, Mr. Underwood, and they'll be teaming up with some Belizean American professors, Dr. Kendra Flores, and Dr. Carla Thurton. And they will be looking at digital platforms, and how you do editing and publishing online, and also transiting to online learning. So each of those courses will be worth 25 CPD hours. They're going to run over a 6-week period, starting on May 4. Registration is now ongoing, and I can tell you we have 3,000 teachers already registered for those courses."

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