TEACHERS of the Success Roman Catholic (RC) School of Laventille will benefit from the Arrow Intervention Programme through the support of the House of Angostura Ltd.
The teachers are being trained to run the Arrow (Aural, Read, Respond, Oral, Write) programme in the school with full support from the Arrow Foundation. This process allows the entire school population access to the powerful literacy intervention programme and is in support of the Laventille School Project launched by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley late last year. “Angostura Ltd is again at the forefront of supporting schools and children in the Laventille and environs, and see this partnership as crucial to the development of young people in the area,” Giselle Laronde- West, Angostura’s senior manager Hospitality and Communications, said in a media release. The House of Angostura which is a manufacturer of world-renowned and award-winning products is located in Laventille. The Success Roman Catholic (RC) School is situated mere minutes away at Church Street. Christopher Bonterre, managing director, of the Arrow Foundation praised the efforts of Angostura in bringing the programme to life for these students and teachers. “It provides us with the impetus to continue to meet the educational needs of the nation’s children. Arrow’s focus is on raising self-esteem through literacy improvement, which is vital to addressing behavioural problems in students,” Bonterre said. He stated that “a lot of the aggressive behaviour found in our primary and secondary schools is rooted in students’ academic failure and the frustration this manifests. When students are able to read and write, they feel better about themselves allowing them to engage others without feeling frustrated.” The foundation, which has a proven track record working with thousands of children in schools across TT , is viewed as a key partner with many corporate sponsors in building self-esteem, improving behaviour and significantly raising literacy levels of students. Arrow’s literacy model has been proven to significantly increase not only reading skills and performance but also spelling, concentration, self-esteem, speech, confidence and motivation in students. It is listed as one of the leading literacy interventions in the UK (Greg Brooks Report 2003/2013). Arrow is an audio visual multi-sensory based programme developed by Dr Colin Lane in the United Kingdom, and focuses on learning through self-voice and multisensory techniques covering reading, spelling, dictation, speech and learning exercises. Evidence of the link between illiteracy and violent behaviour has been well researched and confirmed, the release stated quoting The US Department of Justice: “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.” A study by Dennis Hogenson titled Reading Failure and Juvenile Delinquency found that reading failure was consistently found to correlate with aggression in populations of delinquent boys. The literacy statistics and juvenile court “USA 2009” state that 85 per cent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment also indicates that below level reading abilities are significantly related to the development of aggressive antisocial