Denham Town High School stakeholders review pilot successes

Early last month was a deeply moving moment for Denham Town High School’s Acting Principal Yvette Richard Thompson, as she welcomed a very special group to the school’s campus.

she noted, in part, “I am overwhelmed sometimes with the joy of seeing the process of transformation of our school. It is something that we would have prayed about, it is something envisioned, but by ourselves, we could not do it ... It took a village to start the transformation of Denham Town High School, and where we are now, I can’t wait to share our success.”

The transformation, the acting principal, referred to is an ongoing, multifaceted initiative which has been impacting the school’s teachers, administrators, students and families over the past year. It is the result of collaboration between government, civil society, the private sector, and local and international donor organisations.

Playing a critical role is The MultiCare Youth Foundation’s (MYF) Executive Director Alicia Glasgow Gentles, whose Foundation, among others, had already been providing support to the school. However, a year ago, she responded to a desperate call for additional help from the school, with the inspired idea of convening a powerful stakeholder group to coordinate the implementation of tailored and layered results-based social interventions.

Members include the Ministry of Education and Youth, the Ministry of National Security, The MYF, the Creative Language-Based Learning (CLBL) Foundation, JMMB Joan Duncan Foundation, Crime Stop Jamaica, and representatives of the school’s administrative and teaching staff. In 2024, Head Boy Danique Roach also joined as a student representative, as did Marvin Thompson, vice president of the Parent Teacher’s’ Association.

Since their first meeting on March 9, 2023, significant progress has been made in transforming not only Denham Town High School, but virtually everyone associated with it. Ranging from improving numeracy and literacy, student attendance and behaviour, to progress in governance and leadership, this has been no small accomplishment.

Denham Town High School is one of the beneficiary secondary institutions under the Inter-Ministerial School Support Strategy. This provides targeted support to schools located within or serving the declared Zones of Special Operations. In fact, Denham Town was the most-challenged of these under-served schools in communities impacted by high levels of crime and violence.

OUTSTANDING IMPROVEMENTS

Yet, over the past year, the Denham Town Stakeholders have achieved a series of outstanding improvements. Youth interventions have included literacy, Passport to Success (PTS), life and employability skills, cognitive behavioural therapy, internships, mentorship, vocational skills referrals, and civil document acquisition. Capacity building has included CLBL Professional Development for Teachers of Literacy, Conversations for Greatness (Mindset and Attitude Adjustments) for the school’s leadership and entire staff complement and PTS Life Skills Training of Teacher Trainers and Coaches.

Social support has included urgently needed air conditioning donated by NCB Foundation and Carlisa Enterprises and back-to-school support for students and their parents from Caribbean Cement Company/CEMEX. By way of current MYF projects being implemented in Denham Town, the school has also benefited from funding by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) including the donation of a mural through MYF’s partner Crime Stop Jamaica via USAID’s Positive Pathways programme.

Specific impact figures achieved through the multifaceted outreaches by the stakeholders over the past year include:

• 17 teachers trained to administer the innovative Creative Learning-Based Learning system of teaching literacy, bringing to a total of 26 of the school’s teachers now versed in the CLBL techniques;

• 85 members of staff attended more than five of JMMB’s Conversations for Greatness workshop sessions. These included senior leadership, middle management, administrative, auxiliary and teaching staffers who gained tools to support positive mindset and behavioural change;

• 25 teachers trained as trainers of the PTS Curriculum, and over 100 students who received this highly participatory training in the PTS Life and Employability Skills;

• 18 students were exposed to the Jamaican Transforming Our Perspective model of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TOP CBT), to help them deal with issues surrounding anger and aggression, impulsivity and pro-sociality.

• 46 students benefited from mentorship; 10 served internships; five were referred for vocational skills training; 15 were assisted in obtaining civil documents and more than 100 received material support.

POSITIVE CONSEQUENCES

In reiterating their gratitude to the stakeholders, the school community noted several unintended positive consequences they were happy to share.

Cohort teacher, Monique Green, for example, noted, “The literacy programme has been a saving grace for the school. We have seen students move from ground zero to knowing the letters and sounds of the alphabet. Students can now decode words and identify vowel sounds, consonants, and multi-syllable words. Some students are now reading sentences and short stories.”

Head Boy Danique Roach added that grade-11 students who had been trailing in their academic subjects before, began placing first, second and third in their exams. His claim was backed up by the teaching staff.

It was also pointed out that the positive benefits of the interventions had also been benefiting the Denham Town community. Richard Troupe, director of safety and security in the Ministry of Education and Youth, shared the account of a judge who had once sent for the school leadership to discuss why so many Denham Town High students were appearing before him on criminal charges. He was happy to recount that the same judge had visited the school in 2023, to find out why this was no longer the case.

As Glasgow Gentles noted at the March 7 stakeholders’ meeting, the objective was not only to review progress.

She explained, “The Denham Town High School Stakeholder Group is also being reconvened to chart a path forward for the co-creation of a sustained, coordinated and results-driven programme design that can be effectively funded and executed. We intend that the work of the consortium will also prove to be successful in its efficacy for replication in similar schools across the island. We therefore plan to create a framework to pilot and test a collective impact model that can be documented with demonstrated, tangible results.

“Following this, we plan to submit a concept note for consideration within the relevant government ministries, departments and agencies, and to garner the support of select local and international development partners, the private sector and civil society for the execution of a pilot within similar schools in marginalised communities across the island.

“Truly, this level of positive transformation is too good not to share!”