Too much time is being spent in the classroom disciplining students rather than teaching them.
This is according to chair of the Caribbean Institute for Social and Emotional Learning, Toney Olton, who said this was occurring as the number of children at Sunday school and in service organisations was on the decline.
He is therefore calling for greater emphasis on improving teachers’ social and emotional learning skills to manage increasingly challenging classrooms.
“Teachers are spending too much of their time dealing with discipline, and not sufficient time with instruction because there isn’t a sufficient core of teachers who have the awareness and the skills to manage themselves and to effectively manage the space they occupy daily.
“However, this is what social and emotional learning is about – helping them to get a place where they can become significantly emotionally intelligent to be able to facilitate their students in developing their own emotional intelligence,” Olton said. (TG)
