MoBay whiz gives free COVID-19 online maths lessons

WESTERN BUREAU:

Well-known Montego Bay-based mathematics expert Richard James is offering his programmes free of cost via YouTube to help students who have been displaced by the shutdown of schools nationally as a precautionary measure to limit the spread of COVID-19.

James, who has tutored at several high schools before starting to teach privately, is famed as one of western Jamaica’s most successful mathematics experts in western Jamaica.

With classes being suspended for 14 days since March 13 and the Easter break to follow shortly after, he believes that students will be rusty and unprepared for upcoming external exams.

“The closing down of school itself is not an educational crisis, but when students return after 14 days, for the CSEC students, they will be less than a month and a half before their examination, and this is the bad state of affairs,” said James.

“They will ... be placed at a great disadvantage.”

CSEC is the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate – the series of exams students in the English-speaking Caribbean sit to matriculate to sixth form and some universities.

James said that he was eager to take advantage of the potential of social media as an education platform.

“If it can be brought to the knowledge of the nation that there’s a YouTube channel with all the lessons, examination solution, and problem-solving sessions in audiovisual presentations and students can log on for free, then all concerned should want to capitalise on it,” said James.

“We also have contacts through which they may order other final examination resources. This, I believe, will cushion the shock in the disruption of their examination preparation,” added James.

James said that his YouTube channel should serve as a big help to many of his colleagues who were caught off guard in their preparation of students.

“Right now, my associates in Montego Bay are not ready for this kind of lockdown. Some of them have not been able to get as much as a single lesson to their students, while my students have all the books and booklets at home on everything else they need via my channel, Richard James Mathematics Resources YouTube channel.”

James has also found a way to accommodate primary school students through specially designed audiovisual lessons for them. There are currently 25 audio-visual presentations available for them - “approximately 40 hours of my best work in animation of mathematical concepts,” he said.