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. 

Enjoying Jamaica: "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

One of the important experiences provided by the trip to Jamaica was being able to connect and collaborate with Harvard alumni over dinner in Kingston. The alumni were able to share how their own career experiences and academic skill sets enable them to pursue long-term projects — thereby igniting innumerable ideas for the future among our team members.  

Dawn, Jingjing, and our lovely Julia — a teaching fellow who joined our trip in order to document and evaluate the IEP experiential project in comparative education, provide much needed commonsense to the team, and answer questions about statistical analysis at 2am in the morning. 

The Three Musketeers and D'artagnan. Which one is D'artagnan? 

Days 4 & 5: Leaders in Education, "Get up! Stand up! Don't give up the fight!"

Meeting with Jamaica's national hero, and Harvard alumni, Hon. Edward Seager, former Prime Minister of Jamaica.  

The Hon. Edward Seaga served as Jamaica's prime minister from 1980 to 1989. Seaga's prolific career spans across numerous roles including Minister of Finance and Planning, Minister of Development and Welfare, President of Caribbean Democratic Union (CDU) and 43 consecutive years serving as a Member of Parliament.  

Seaga's most famed accomplishment is the pivotal role he played in the return of Marcus Garvey's body to Jamaica for burial. Moreover, Seaga spearheaded the transition of the country's financial institutions from foreign to Jamaican ownership, established the Jamaican Festival, designed the Cultural Training Center, and created multiple social programs focusing on education and employment. 

Hon. Rev. Ronald Thwaites, Minister of Education. During our meeting with the Minister, we discussed our observations on activity-based learning strategies from two days of classroom visits throughout seven schools in Kingston. The Minister commented on the need for leaders in education to actively draw upon the perspectives of students, teachers and administrators in order to successfully improve the national education system.   

Dr. Franklin Johnston, advisor to the Minister, comments that while he appreciates Harvard students highlighting the bright spots in Jamaica's education system, he  would also like for us to share a critical perspective on what is not working, what needs improvement and what our recommendations would be in order to make such changes possible in Jamaica. 

Addy draws upon her previous experience of living and working in Jamaica as she presents to the Minister of education.

Monitoring & Evaluation Unit, Ministry of Education. 

Team Jamaica in the News, "Sayin', 'Ths is my message to you - ou - ou."

Team Morocco, Can You Handle the Heat?

You may not be able to hear anything, and the image quality is quite shabby, but it's still something. 

Addy and Josephine present the goals of our project.

Josephine wins nominations for best dressed and most glamorous smile.

Team Jamaica watches with intense fixation, except for Chris,  Robert and Paul who are disappointed about missing the news reporting the scores from yesterday's cricket match. 

Addy is officially famous! She'll even give you her autograph. 

Inspirational Teaching Models Using Game-based Learning, "Some people got hopes and dreams. Some people got ways and means."

Conversations on game-based learning in Junior Achievement

What skills are relevant to Jamaican students in a 21st century context? Some teachers and students expressed the need to develop financial literacy in order to make wise investments, participate in the global market and aid in Jamaica's economic growth. 

Students in Junior Achievement work in teams, learning through hands-on, experimental learning, to develop their own businesses.

Chris discusses game-based learning activities in this student's financial literacy class.

One student expressed to Josephine that her class in financial literacy was fun and engaging while her other classes were just classes.  

Even when students succeed in school, there are not always jobs available for graduates and they often must look for employment outside of Jamaica. If students have education that encourages them to be active agents in creating businesses, and collaborate in small company teams, their education becomes a tool to construct employment options for the future. 

Robert and Paul listen to students' experiences with Junior Achievement  

Shua explores what makes school engaging for students.  

Day 3 & 4: Schools, "None but ourselves can free our minds."

For two days, our team of 14 broke into pairs and visited seven schools throughout Kingston. The Ministry of Education assisted us by arranging the site visits and granting us access to classrooms and the opportunity to interview students, teachers and school administrators. We found that the seven schools all had strong principals and that our small sample may not be an accurate representation of most school in Jamaica. At each campus, we gained insight into existing pedagogical practices that utilized sports and game-based learning as means to improve student outcomes. 


Guest Blog: Christopher Kajander

        Jamaica College is an all-boys high school founded in 1789. Addy and I spent two days on the beautiful campus talking with students, teachers, and administrators. The culture is steeped in sports, competition, and excellence. When you drive up to the campus one of the first things you see is a sign reading “School of Champions,” and both the students and faculty are proud of their accomplishments: 15 Rhode Scholar recipients to date, numerous track and field championships, soccer championships, the list goes on and on.

        The most interesting conversation in my view was the one we had with the principal, Mr. Reed.  Jamaica College had been in decline for a number of years and their reputation had suffered. Mr. Reed was brought in 7 years ago and he turned the school around. This sentiment was voiced by both teachers and students.  We spoke at length about his approach to teachers, his approach to the community, his many methods of assessment, and how he builds culture. The thing I found most interesting was his use of student and parent opinions to create a comprehensive assessment of teachers, administrators and the school. He wants to know if the community feels like the school is doing a good job.  It isn’t the only assessment he uses to evaluate teachers and staff, but it helps paint the bigger picture. 

Queen's School in Kingston, Jamaica

At the Queens School, we found that the girls took pride in their sports activities and academic pursuits.  

The girls grilled us on how to get into Harvard and shared their ambitious career goals. 

Education for girls in safe spaces can be one way to promote gender equity in the broader society. 

Teachers commented that they would like to incorporate Jamaica's national athletes into the classroom to serve as role models to students. Unfortunately, this aspiration is constrained by the reality that many of the athletes are exported overseas to train and study in U.S. universities.

Teaching the value of team work, participation, communication and effort through sports.  

Colleen was not kidding when she said she wanted to learn more about Reggae as a teaching tool in Jamaican schools. This is no laughing matter. 

Shamayne, graduate student in the Education Policy and Management program at HGSE, interviews students, teachers and administrators about education in Jamaica while drawing comparisons with the U.S. education system.

Sports in education.

Day 2: Exploring Jamaica, "Is This Love?"

On Sunday, we had the day to ourselves in order to prepare for our upcoming project and explore Jamaica.  

Hellshire Beach

Sipping coconut juice, swimming, visiting with horses and slow jam'n on Hellshire Beach. 

Guest Blog: Christopher Kajander

"I Thank God That I Finally Found You." 

       I had an epiphany on Hellshire beach. I was waist deep in the turquoise water listening to 90s Slow Jams.  All the hits from my middle-school dance days rolled out of 8-foot speakers that framed the entrance to a beach hut where they served fried parrot fish and warm Red Stripe for the locals, cold for the foreigners.  Boyz II Men, KC and JoJo, R. Kelly—all the artists who first defined love for me, their songs providing my first opportunity to slow dance with a girl— were blending my beach experience with a strange mix of nostalgia and newness. These songs that lived and breathed in the middle-school gymnasiums of my youth suddenly felt so perfect on this strip of pristine white sand on an island far from home. Paul Perry and I sang along while Colleen and JingJing laughed at our attempts to hit the high notes. I didn’t know it until then, but all my life I had prayed for something like this. In that moment I had an epiphany: After  listening to Slow Jams on a beach, I’m not sure I can ever go back to Slow jams without a beach, or go to a beach without Slow Jams.

Robert reaches enlightenment, again, while contemplating the many ways to describe how much he enjoys his lunch. 

Catch of the day.

Dawn, a HGSE doctoral student from Jamaica, shares her knowledge on Jamaican culture and customs.

Paul is mesmerized by the repertoire of 90's slow jams played on the beach and the fact that he and Chris are able to sing the lyrics to each one.  

Terryl finds that sunshine, pristine sea shores and delicious fresh fish are all conducive to  academic debate. 

Tribute to Bob Marley is ubiquitous across Kingston.

Day 1: Cambridge to Kingston, "Exodus"

Team Jamaica lands in Kingston, Jamaica 

The Ministry of Education gave us a warm welcome. 
Our bus driver and guide, Tony, introduced us to uptown and downtown Kingston. 

Finalizing the game plan with affiliates of the Ministry of Education
We met with Rebecca, Kenneth and Sophia in order to discuss our goals and objectives for our project in Jamaica. After several months of communication through e-mail and phone calls, it's  exciting to know that our project is finally underway.