DREAM Project And U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo Celebrate First Teacher Training Project Graduation

The participants received intensive workshops on lesson planning and classroom management strategies to support English language learning in the classroom

Cabarete, Puerto Plata – The local NGO Dominican Republic Education and Mentoring Project (DREAM) and the United States Embassy in Santo Domingo celebrated the first Teacher Training Project graduation for twenty English teachers of the public sector from the north coast region.  The project, funded by the U.S. Embassy, is collaboration between the DREAM Project, the Dominican Ministry of Education (MINERD), and World Learning/SIT organization.

The event was held at the regional office of the Ministry of Education and was headed by Molly Hamm, Associate Director of DREAM Project, United States Embassy Counselor for Public Affairs, Chase Beamer, and Jeanne Bogaert, MINERD Director of Curriculum for Modern Languages. During the event, Mrs. Hamm said “There is a great need to create skills and increase the capacity of English teachers so that students can access better economic and educational opportunities.”

During his remarks, the U.S. Embassy’s Counselor for Public Affairs Chase Beamer expressed that  “When a student learns English, he or she  opens the door to better jobs, a greater ability to interact with foreign markets, and greater opportunities to study abroad and learn from other perspectives.”

The graduates received a certificate in Communicative English Language Teaching, which included six full days of in-person training in Puerto Plata and eight weeks of online work. “The training helped me harness my creativity and find new techniques to motivate my students and make them feel that they are the most important part of the learning process,” said Carmen Julia Crisóstomo, one of the participants.

World Learning Trainers Susan Renaud and Brian Neal Long provided intensive workshops on lesson planning and classroom management strategies to support English language learning in the classroom, combining feedback, orientation and reflection, focused on improving the quality of language teaching programs in public schools and produce better learning outcomes for Dominican students. DREAM has long partnered with MINERD to train teachers along the North Coast and throughout the Dominican Republic.