Durbanville Schools Foundation: Training Sessions for Position (July 2024)

Training & Mentoring Sessions for Position

The fourth set of training sessions was sucessfully run for this new cohort of Foundation Phase teachers in Metro North.

The training sessions were immediately followed up by class visits at each of the project schools.

Date: 30th + 31st July 2024

Time: 14:00- 16:00

Venue: Alpha Primary School, Durbanville

Findings from the third set of training sessions:-

Attendance at session 4a: 73% (16 out of 22)

Attendance at session 4b: 50% (11 out of 22)

There were several teachers who could not attend the sessions, but who did send apologies for not being able to attend. The attendance at the second session was particularly dissapointing mainly because of the absence of 4 teachers from one of the schools. This school was preparing for a departmental visit on the same day. We however were able to bridge the gap for teachers who missed one or both of the sessions at the mentoring visits after the training sessions.

70% of teachers found the content of the training very to highly beneficial, while three teacher rated the training average.

70% of the teachers expressed high levels of interest in the BCP, while three teachers expressed an average interest.

Verbatim comments from the training:-

'Thank you for everything you do for us as educators, your time,energy, encouragement as well as your knowledge. We really appreciate you and can't wait to implement everything in our classes. Keep on doing what you do.'

'I enjoyed the Position concept(especially the left /right sides) the most and was like, how I wish I had known it much earlier.'

'Training is clear...understandable ,practical...thank you.'

Findings from Mentoring Visits:

• Demonstration lessons were primarily conducted by the lead trainer at three of the four schools, observed by teachers at the schools.
• This approach was deemed suitable due to the absence of several teachers during the training sessions.
• Teachers responded uniformly positively after witnessing practical demonstrations of the domain in their classes.
• The visits to the schools appeared to rejuvenate the teachers, providing positive momentum for the teachers.