New Classrooms for St. Thomas Technical High

Five classrooms are being constructed at the St. Thomas Technical High School in Golden Grove in an effort to ease the shortage of space at the institution.
Work on three of the classrooms is being undertaken by the Ministry of Education, while the others are being built through the school’s Parent Teachers Association and funds garnered from fundraising activities put on by the school.
Principal of the school, Phillip Wilson, told JIS News that work on the three classrooms being undertaken by the Ministry, should be completed by September.
“It is just a matter of putting in the fixtures and getting the plumbing work done, so we will have it for September for sure,” he said. Additional work to be done involves painting, installation of windows and doors and the construction of a manhole and pit for the sanitary block.
He said that work on the other two buildings, which will accommodate a resource centre and a staff room, is partly complete. “We will be trying to complete that by the end of August,” he informed.
The principal said that the additional space at the school will allow teachers to embark on a new teaching method. “All this access to the classrooms will allow us, come September, to be teaching our strategies in cooperative teaching and learning, where we are embarking on teaching students in small groups using the cooperative teaching methods,” he said.
Mr. Wilson said the method has already been introduced to the lower classes by teachers, who have learnt the strategy through seminars and workshops.
According to Mr. Wilson, the initiative, which aimed to develop social skills in students, is being implemented by a group of students at the Northern Caribbean University pursuing doctoral studies in educational leadership.
St. Thomas Technical High School has some 1,412 students on roll.