Educators endorse JPS Foundation/UWI CAPE STEM workshop

High school science teachers Christopher Taylor and Rashaan Smith believe they have found a dependable formula.

Each January, their students attend intensive workshops hosted by The University of the West Indies (UWI), which sharpen understanding of the most challenging areas of their prescribed CAPE syllabuses.

For Taylor, a physics teacher at Manchester High School, there is particular value in having his current cohort – now preparing for Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations in May – participate in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workshops overseen by lecturers in UWI’s Department of Science and Technology.

“Manchester High School has always benefited from these workshops, especially in the area of Unit 2 operational amplifiers in CAPE Physics,” said Taylor, who has taught at the institution for 25 years since graduating in 1994.

Experience, he suggested, does not lessen the university’s comparative advantage. While he is familiar with simulation exercises, UWI provides the practical depth and scale that secondary schools struggle to match.

“Even though I have been teaching physics for a while, I always rely on UWI to provide the practical aspect and the hands-on simulation,” he said. Just as important, he added, is the change in setting: removing students from “our four classroom walls” and placing them in a university environment, where they sit in lecture theatres and use better-equipped laboratories, broadens both confidence and ambition.

Taylor traces his own affinity for science to early schooling at Spanish Town Primary and later Manchester High, crediting intrinsic motivation and strong teachers. “The concepts came naturally to me,” he recalled. “I am a mathematically inclined person and so I would have gravitated towards the sciences.”

Now responsible for guiding a new generation of potential STEM professionals, Taylor said the workshops have consistently strengthened learning outcomes for his fourth- to sixth-form students. This year, their impact was heightened by disruption from Hurricane Melissa, which damaged several schools.

“As a school and science department, the students pursuing STEM subjects at Manchester have definitely benefited over the years,” he said. “Especially this year … the benefit [of these workshops] would be realised even more.” He accompanied 57 students to the programme.

Comparable conclusions were drawn by Rashaan Smith, a chemistry teacher at his alma mater, Wolmer’s Boys’ School where he has been teaching or the past 15 years. His students also attended the workshops at UWI’s Mona campus.

CRITICAL SUPPORT

“It gives them that experience in the lab,” Smith said. He noted that many of the instruments available at UWI are not found in secondary schools, allowing students to conduct experiments their own facilities cannot support. “That is one of the important things.”

The CAPE/STEM workshops are open to final-year students islandwide studying chemistry, physics, computer science, geography and mathematics. They are supported by a memorandum of understanding signed in 2023 between UWI and the JPS Foundation, which commits $16 million over five years. The partnership reduces the per-student cost from as much as $5,000 to $1,500, with the fee fixed for the duration.

Smith registered 24 students from Wolmer’s for this year’s sessions, held from January 12 to 16, and described the annual programme as both anticipated and reliable.

“They are generally always informative,” he said. After students complete laboratory work and presentations at UWI, schools are better positioned to reinforce the material. Exposure to experiments during lectures, he added, helps students relate theory to practice and grasp content more securely.

At 39, Smith teaches across the third to sixth forms and remains animated by the subject itself. “One of the things that I love most is actually bringing the students from a place where they don’t know something to now being masters of it,” he said.

He finds particular satisfaction when students can link classroom concepts to phenomena in the wider world, an outlook shaped, perhaps, by his own family ties to science education. His sister teaches mathematics at Excelsior High School.

Beyond the workshops, Taylor stressed the broader importance of STEM careers. Science educators, he warned, are in persistent short supply, a problem worsened by migration and overseas opportunities.

“I think the most important thing is that we don’t get to a stage where we are not relevant. We are always in high demand,” he said. Shortages, he added, have long required teachers to support multiple institutions. For him, science education offers both professional relevance and a chance to make a national contribution. “In addition, I get a chance to touch lives from various walks of life.”

He also rejected the notion that STEM is a fashionable novelty. “The whole idea of STEM has not been one that is new,” Taylor said. Sciences, he argued, have always underpinned problem-solving.

Irrespective of the area, science and technology has always been seen as the biggest discipline for problem solving” at individual, community and national levels, particularly in an era defined by technological change.

UWI reports that more than 1,800 students from 41 schools participated in the week-long workshops. Alongside strong representation from Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine, hundreds attended from western parishes directly affected by Hurricane Melissa, including students from Munro College and BB Coke High in St Elizabeth, and Herbert Morrison Technical High and Montego Bay High in St James.