Dionne Rose, Staff ReporterFACED WITH a situation where scores of grade seven students are barely able to read, teachers at the Happy Grove High School in Portland have instituted a number of remedial classes to address the problem.
Lauriston Lindsey, principal at the school, said the situation is so bad that out of a population of more than 200 grade seven students only 10 were reading at the required level. To address the problem, reading labs and other remedial classes have been set up by the teachers, the principal explained.
"This is a challenge," Mr. Lindsey told a Gleaner Editors' Forum on Wednesday. "We are working at it... we now have a reading centre. I must tell you that the teachers have done a good job in encouraging the students to go to the reading labs."
COMMITTED
Mr. Lindsey said the teachers were
committed to improving the students' reading ability. "We say (to them) you are here already, you cannot read. Nobody is to say to any child that you are a dunce, you need a dunce cap. You are here and if at least at the end of the period that you are here, you can read and write I think that would be a great accomplishment," he noted.
The principal added that his school has also enlisted the services of the Mico Child Assessment and Research in Education Centre (CARE) to do an evaluation on each student.
"We have already started testing all our children in our school to see their reading levels," Mr. Lindsey said.
He said the results of one of the evaluations seen so far was shocking, revealing that the research centre has recommended that a particular student should be enrolled in the School of Hope, an institution that admits mentally-challenged students.
Happy Grove High School was one the schools that received a 'F' rating in Dr. Dennis Minott's 2003 report ranking high schools based on Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) results.
