Individuals employed under the National Employment Programme as education mentors will ultimately benefit from an education mentorship enhancement seminar which began on Monday, March 21st.
The week-long event is taking place at the Public Service Union Building.
GIS News spoke with Coordinator of the National Employment Programme, Emaline Burnette-Honoré.
“Presently, we have 76 education mentors. We mean interns assigned to various schools around the island. Their role is to assists students who are weak in some subjects. It’s an after school programme.”
She explained that the workshop targets two groups of 38 mentors for a week each.
She hopes the training will open new doors in the education sector and that the mentors will employ their new skills in the classroom.
“We will cover topics like classroom management, lesson planning, conflict management, identifying at-risk children, components of the Education Act, problem-solving and others. They are dealing with young minds and what they write on these blank slates is what we’ll experience tomorrow,” she shared.
Latoya Joseph-Noel is a participant. She looks forward to the changes which she hopes to bring to the classroom.
She says, “I believe we can put what we have learned into practice, better ourselves and teach other educators.”
Joseph-Noel says the National Employment Programme has brought her one step closer to her dreams of one day becoming a teacher.
“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher so this is a great experience; going to the classroom of excited kids with different stories. We are able to work with them, develop them and mould them. The children depend on us and trust us so we are really careful about what we say to them. It’s great.”
The National Employment Programme has impacted countless lives both directly and indirectly since its inception in 2013
A very unfortunate headline, Anyone in the Netherlands Antilles reading this would understand it to mean “FAKE education…”., “NEP” in Dutch translates as fake, false or phoney, a cousin of the German “nepp”, which is used to describe a rip off. A “Nepp Insel” for instance would mean a rip-off island or a Nepp Lokal” is a clipp joint. From the Yiddish Nebbish/Nebekh/Nibbish, used to describe a poor or unfornunatnate person in the sense of being a nobody.
Many years ago Rolls Royce introduce a Silver Mist model, only to change the name in a hurry when it was pointed out to them that in German it translated as Silver Dung or Ordure.
So Teachers are assigned mentors when the teachers should be the mentors. I don’t understand anything here?
One day you all sets of wicked leaders will stop wasting money for political patronage…NOTHING LASTS FOR EVER….The whole set up of the NEP is to try to keep a Satanic, Vile, Vicious, Inept gang of clowns in power…Any other government would do better than this corrupt DLP…Why not use the money to help create sustainable jobs?
Well well, now we getting nep teachers. They competing with the regular ones. Must say that is cheaper for the government because they not costing as much but what does that do for our childrens education? You get what you pay for.
NEP = total waste of money and other resources to the tax payer. No benefit to the economy as a whole nor its participants. It’s only a vehicle for the government to talk the appalling youth unemployment figures a bit more palatable.
You should only speak of what you know. When you have conducted a study with real facts and figures, come back and make a statement.
An economy cannot accelerate unless self-sustaining jobs are added by the private sector. I can understand why those in the workforce are happy about NEP in the short term, but it’s a stopgap at best.
Ok, clearly you have the figures and you know what you are talking about. Please share with us!
I disagree.