Day 7: Leaving Jamaica, "No Woman, No Cry"

Team Jamaica in Montego Bay, saying goodbye to their beautiful villa.

Sammy ruminates, "Why would any sane person ever leave this beautiful beach?" No one on the team has even an inkling. 

Sunset over Montego Bay.

Terryl is going to kill Colleen when he sees this photo! It's really the lesser of two evils as she also photographed him cuddling with one of the water bottles later on during the car ride. 

Day 6 & 7: Presenting to MOE & Conversations with International Organizations, "We're Jam'n"

Representatives from international organizations, including UNICEF, UNESCO, IDB and USAID,  discussed their role in supporting quality education in Jamaica and provided feedback on our project. 

We compared the Jamaica's mission statement for education, as defined by the Ministry of Education, with our own views on the purpose of education and the stated goals of other nations. 

Presenting policy considerations to the MOE.

Game-based learning is teaching and learning through games with defined objectives and outcomes. These games are designed to engage students, increase attention and interest, enhance classroom management and ultimately improve student outcomes.

Game-based learning offers numerous advantages such as accommodations for diverse learning styles, health and life skills, holistic youth development and support for cognitive and socio-emotional development. 

Sports in education and game-based learning can be utilized as tools to promote gender equity throughout Jamaica's schools by promoting co-ed games, gender sensitivity training and providing stereotype-free roles and duties. 

The team was particularly interested in exploring and harnessing the successful methods employed through game-based learning that were already present in Jamaica’s classrooms and could serve as a local resource to other schools. 

A careful effort was made to insure that the policy considerations did not overreach the findings and scope of the project. One of the limitations of our research was the brief amount of time spent in a relatively low number of schools. Additionally, the considerations were selected, in part, based upon their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and applicability to a wide range of schools across Jamaica.