Mayaro Guayaguayare Comm. School

Mayaro Guayaguayare Community School is an independent, community based not-for-profit educational institution whose mission is to provide a quality primary education, specifically in the communities of Mayaro and Guayaguayare which are rural communities in Trinidad. The need for this school in the community is evident by the reality that children with diverse learning styles' needs are not  being met by the traditional school system.

Our mission is to promote  the social, cultural, intellectual and developmental needs of our children. This approach is one that is missing from our traditional primary school educational system.
The system is inclined to promote primary education as the means to passing an exam to attend high school. As a result of this myopic view we have in our country, a lot of stressed parents and eleven and twelve year old children, who  are infused  with the idea of not doing well on the SEA High School Exams, could mean  that there future would  impacted negatively . In our view, children at any age should not be burdened in that manner. While learning should be challenging, it must also be a natural and fun activity.

Philosophy

The school’s philosophy is derived from the concept that education is different from schooling, and that distinction is what propelled the school to adopt the slogan SMILE - Smart Motivated Independent Learners We believe that at the end of our children’s education there should be a SMILE.

Parental Involvement

In addition to this, the involvement of parents in the educational process is highly emphasized, and a required condition of enrolment in our school. The concept of the three legged stool, is practiced which involves the teacher the student and the parent in a symbiotic process.

Public Service & Community

The Community School’s philosophy includes the idea of community service and civic responsibility as a necessary component of education. In relation to this, the school works with community and civic organizations and has participated in many community activities as a way of giving students and parents an understanding of the need for service as part of the education of a child. In this regard, the school has organized and our students have participated in activities for International Women’s Day, Divali, Community development Day and several other significant national days including Emancipation and World Books and Copyright day.

 The school has been involved in two major projects recently. In 2013 we hosted aBookfair on Nelson Mandela Day entitled "Donate a Book to a Child". In 2014 we organized jointly with the South African Association of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Jegna Institute a highly successful eye clinic entitled “The Gift of Sight”, which saw 200 persons in the Mayaro-Guayaguayare Community and beyond examined .


Purpose

The purpose of the school is to be an alternative for parents and children who may need a different environment from the traditional school system; an environment that is sensitive to cultural, religious and other peculiar orientations. In this regard, we accept children who are sometimes labeled as troubled by the traditional schools.

Curriculum

Our curriculum is a combination of the national guidelines of the Ministry of Educations of Trinidad and Tobago, international best practices including elements of the Singapore Model, CORE knowledge and other international models of repute, while fusing them with the local content and relevance.
The Mayaro Guayaguaye Community School offers dynamic and cutting edge education to all children who pass through it’s doors.

Our Model

Our school is small and we plan to keep it that way. At the moment our population is thirty students and four teachers, and we are in the process of building capacity for sixty children. We do not want to have a ratio of more than 10 students per teacher. We believe small classes offer better individual attention. While we function within the established parameters of the educational systems, we also have an adjusted operational system running simultaneously.
In Trinidad and Tobago, primary school classes are organized around standards. Except for the 1st and 2nd years, we have made an adjustment in this regard, in our operations. We have what is called an entry phase, a middle phase and an exit phase. In each of these there are competencies that must be acquired before leaving each. This guarantees that each child will leave the school with the necessary competencies, and simply will not be promoted to fill quotas for high school exams.


Teacher Training

Teacher’s techniques are constantly being refined as the school has access to membership and material from a number of local and international educational organizations, thereby making the latest innovation in technique and methodology and pedagogy available. As part of our teacher development we encourage all our teachers to read from the extensive list of material that the school has access to, based on its association with international and national publishing and educational agencies. In 2011 the school organized a math workshop for teachers and students with respected lecturer Nzingha Nommo of DePaul University in Chicago. Ms. Nommo’s workshop centered around culturally relevant methods of teaching mathematics


Environment

The school from its inception has been located close to the Mayaro Coastline, and within walking distance of the beach and fishing communities.
We therefore felt it necessary to initiate the idea of Beach Fridays in which every Friday evening the school goes to beach to interact with the environment of our coastal community, at this exercise the children are allowed to play on the beach and are taught the importance of the local environment and the importance of the ocean, In addition to the role it plays in our communities

Field Trips

We see field trips as very important in the educating children, consequently the school has engaged in a know your community project in which the children are taken on tours to local roads in the community on hiking expedition, some are forest roads and therefore it gives them an appreciation of their environment.

International Travel

Children of Rural Communities  do not have many opportunities for social and cultural exposure.  To address this issue,  the school arranged for six students, two parents and two teachers for  an educational scientific and historical tour  of three South Eastern  US States, namely Florida, Alabama and Georgia.  They visited Historical African American Colleges, namely Florida A&M,  Alabama A&M, Tuskeegee University, and Morehouse and Spelman Colleges.
Scientific sites included the NASA’s Space Station in Huntsville, Alabama and Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History.
Other sites visited included a tour of CNN Centre  in Atlanta, where the students were exposed to the science of news making. The Martin Luther King Center, and The Civil Rights Museum In Birmingham were also some other areas visited. In addition, students were taken to various restaurants as a way of exposing them to the cuisine of different cultures.

Finance

The school is funded by some parents who pay fees, but a number of our students are on scholarships as we try not to turn away students who need our services, the funds collected from parents pay for 9 months of school expense, as fees are not collected during vacation.
As a consequence, we alwys have a shortfall of three months  resulting in fund raising  being always required.
Our teachers volunteer their time in this regard, and one of our teachers have been managing the school and teaching for three years as a volunteer without any remunerations or stipends of any kind.
We seek your support  in making a monthly contribution  or a one time donation, that can support the Mayaro Guayaguayare Community School in its endeavors to eduacte children and to create a more developed community.

The school  presently rents a building for which it pays $6,650.00 Trinidad and Tobago (TT) dollars per month.  Additional expenses for maintenance are another $6,000 TT dollars for an approximate total of $12,650 TT, which calculates to approximately $2,000 US Dollars. Please note:  at the time of the writing of this proposal, the exchange rate between US and TT is 6.43 TT dollars to 1 US dollar. 

We would like to continue our work and we hope in the next two years to acquire a parcel of land to construct a building for the school.

This request  for support is to  all persons of goodwill who would like to support an instution that is trying to  make a difference  through  education.