Faced with one hundred pancakes last week Friday from breakfast in the morning to tea in the afternoon, I am sure that Professor Frank Worrell was grateful that they were not the pancakes which are served with maple syrup. Rather, the professor was adjudicating the beautiful voices of girls 9-11 in the mini preliminaries of the Music Festival at the All Saints Memorial Hall, and the test piece was "Pancakes."
Dr Worrell, Associate Professor of School Psychology at Pennsylvania State University, on a nine month sabbatical from PennState, did not come to Trinidad in the first instance to adjudicate, but to train Guidance and Special Education Officers in diagnosis assessment and intervention for academic and behavioural problems in schools, and to supervise the norming of diagnostic instruments in a Trinidad & Tobago sample.
Born at Irving Lane, East Dry River, 41 years ago, young Worrell attended St Hilda's Girls School as "they took boys in infant 1 and 2", then moved to Richmond Street Boys but finally sat the Common Entrance at St Crispin's Anglican Primary because "I wasn't doing well in Arithmetic and the teacher there was giving lessons." Graduating with A levels from St Mary's College, he proceeded to the University of Western Ontario and obtained a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Psychology, and finally a Ph.D in Educational and School Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. "But music was always a thread in my entire university career, I did not study music as it was then a second class field so many students did not take it seriously."
To the Professor, his singing teacher at St Mary's, Lindy Ann Bodden Ritch, accompanist for the 100 pancakes "remains today Trinidad's most competent accompanist, nobody can touch her, she is a remarkable gem that Trinidad has and it is amazing they are not appreciative of her. When you entered St Mary's in Form One, Mrs Ritch gave you a singing test and separated the sheep from the goat. If you could sing you were assigned to the choir."
It was easy for young Worrell to take part in vocal and piano duets and other choral items as he had been involved in piano from age six, the school choir and choral speaking "the big thing then in elementary school." Ironically, it is the Music Festival, which he is currently judging more than a quarter of a century later "that has had a profound impact on my life as participation showed that competence matters, You needed to try your best, not just win a prize, knowing you get good comments for your interpretation and those kinds of things. And what really stuck with me more than other things was one of the adjudicators invited to guest on radio, talked about professionalism which many people define as getting paid for what you do, but in his mind professionalism always meant achieving a certain minimal standard of competence. Whether you are getting paid or not, whatever you do you always achieve a certain level, you do not fall below that."
"You could be the only person in a Music Festival Class and will get no certificate if you do not in fact reach a standard there would be no certificate awarded. The Music Festival has played a tremendous role in the development of some of our prominent musicians, all of whom came through the Music Festival with the exception of pan which is now starting to come into its own Festival."
During his five years at Western, Professor Worrell played the glockenspiel, a kind of vertical keyboard, and also bass drum, in the marching band, and sang with the University chorus. At the University of California, he was Director of the School of Education's Chorus and is now Associate Director of Penn State Glee Club's all male chorus. And brought the club to Trinidad in March 1998 followed by the Juniata College Concert Choir in March 2001.
Speaking of the local research project, the very knowledgeable and experienced psychology Professor is actually working with the Central Guidance Unit of the Ministry of Education. "We are in the process of developing local normative standards for some tests which will allow our guidance officers when they get a child with a reading problem to be able to use local norms rather than American or foreign tests." Reading in the elementary schools contributes the most to a lack of later school success as 75% of the students do not learn to read well causing significant academic and behavioural problems later on. The tests will give teachers a way to diagnose reading problems and correct it by intervention from the first year through Standard five.
And to this end data collection is going on through the schools now. "The idea is that they will become self supporting. Meanwhile my American colleagues have been extremely generous and have actually waived copyright of their tests" says Dr Worrell " you would have to pay so many american dollars for use but they are allowing the Guidance Unit to photocopy. In April, Dr Molly Watkins and Dr Tracey Hall will both come here to help train the officers for the Guidance Unit to implement the project, which is the result of a mandate from on high to move the country forward in education. By this time the Guidance Officers will be able to not only administer but can create and develop the measures themselves."
Dr Worrell is very happy with the education "I got here in Trinidad and it is nice for me to give back and sponsors have assisted. Also many of my graduate students at Penn State are today doing their theses on Trinidad & Tobago data collected from a sample of students across both islands in all educational districts so that the norms will be truly Trinidad & Tobago norms. I invited them to use this data but they have to enter it and print norms' manuals so that by January 2003, we will make sure that we turn over to the Central Guidance Unit 100 norms manuals on reading measures."
Screening has shown that there are a lot of students in this country with mild problems, such as, learning disability and mental retardation, who can learn but Trinidad & Tobago currently has no way of identifying these problems so they sit in the class and are labelled disruptive and lazy since things are harder for them and they eventually tune out.
Dr Worrell has high hopes of the ability to develop a programme that serves the entire Caribbean region "and we would be more than willing to help them to start such a programme."
The psychological service in schools needs to be taken seriously in Trinidad & Tobago. "Look at the violence in our schools" he exclaimed "there is a belief that kids who develop into problem adolescents and adults come from schools in poor areas. I think the majority may not come from there but the extent we are creating students, more and more are not able to read or write, they have no functional skills that would allow them to earn a living so we are going to see increasing violence in schools."
He is appalled that there are no training needs for teachers and principals "imagine in the year 2002, all you need is the subject area degree, you are not taught how to teach, that worked once when we were dealing with support at home, parents who have degrees and have invested in their children's education." He was quick to reassure that many poorer parents may have the same concerns but not necessarily the same skills or time to invest as they have to work longer hours to make ends meet and they themselves did not graduate from school so it is not possible for them to help their children.
"Schools need to become a place that it does not matter where you come from, what the home circumstances are. We will educate you is the goal of public education and in the long term it benefits society because you get an increasingly educated population and it benefits society in terms of a reduced crime rate, reduced demands on social services and increased tax revenues because you have more working citizens."
One of the biggest causes of criminal behaviour in adolesence, says Dr Worrell "is lack of supervision. At many of our secondary school campuses we have kids who are unsupervised and loose for some portion of the day so it is not surprising that you end up with violence, drugs and sexual activity occurring on these campuses. And because we do not have a substitute teacher system, with teachers having 14 sick and 14 casual days during the school year, in most cases those kids are sitting without a teacher. Every kid that teacher teaches has no teacher. Two or three others try to cover but there is no way you can have classes covered all the time without developing the substitute teacher system and not just a school of education system."
It is obvious that the learned professor has gone through our school system with a fine tooth comb as he is aware that the National Maintenance Training & Security needs to change. "They have special responsibility for security and maintenance of schools. But the janitors and people sitting at the gate checking cars in and out, need to be on patrol. The schools do not need to have areas where a significant number of adults are not passing on a regular basis as kids stay in these areas for any length of time without an adult seeing them and this accounts for 15% of the problems, maybe more."
And also touched on "the increasing number of students coming to school but not going to class. They are in the yard where nobody is going to see them. There should be a policy that rest rooms remain locked other than recess or lunch time as kids are using them to smoke marijuana, have sex and such activities."
Dr Worrell admits "there are concerned principals but the majority of them do not have management skills. They have a degree with no training as educational leaders, curriculum leaders, nor any training in running a school or campus."