First Lady Sandra Granger yesterday met with United States-based early childhood education specialist and teacher Dorrie Thomas-Crawford, who has been hosting training workshops for teachers in the Buxton community for over seven years.
According to a press release from the Ministry of the Presidency, the meeting was intended to explore the possibility of expanding that training.
The release quoted the First Lady as saying, “…Given her ideas and experience in early childhood education, we were discussing how best we could share her skills and those of her colleagues, who want to contribute, some [of whom are] Guyanese, with the Ministry of Education to see if we could plan for a bigger workshop next year that would help our teachers gain the kind of skills that she can bring to improve learning.”
Thomas-Crawford has a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and 24 credits in Special Education. She teaches at the kindergarten level and has been an educator for 25 years, the release said, adding that she had expressed the wish to inform the First Lady about her workshops and to invite her to observe them.
She was quoted as saying, “Our workshop is entitled ‘Teaching children problem-solving and thinking skills… I want to show the teachers how they can incorporate language development and concept modelling in the classroom; not only teaching the children to write but teaching them thinking skills and problem solving skills.”
A workshop is scheduled for Thursday at the Friendship Primary School, during which, a special session titled ‘Class’ will be hosted by Thomas-Crawford in collaboration with Leticia Lake, a former Head Teacher of Tutorial High School and Guidance Counsellor at the Board of Education. ‘Class’, Thomas-Crawford said, has been designed to teach the teachers concept development and other subjects.
According to the release, she said plans are in train to bring five teachers to host a week long workshop.
Thomas-Crawford’s sister Joycelyn Thomas-Wilson facilitated and accompanied her to the meeting at State House, the release said.
