Lusa Community Chest says it welcomes Air Products as a community partner and appreciates the funding for the Gr8 Start ECD Program that enabled Lusa to train 15 educators and a few unemployed ladies. This not only upskilled educators who have never undergone any training before but also opened a doorway for unemployed ladies to possibly volunteer or get educator employment.
The Gr8Start Training Program:
Effective teaching requires education and care to be integrated; with learning, development and inter-related experiences for children. Well-developed ECD programs such as the Gr8Start program provide just such integrated learning.
The program explores activities that equip educators to stimulate, develop and test the social, emotional and physical intelligence of young children. It enables educators to monitor and evaluate motor development, hearing and listening skills, eye movements and visual processes as well as the gross motor and fine motor skills in pre-school children to prepare for and ensure school development.
The facilitation of the Gr8Start Program occurs over 4 days as a hands-on, practical and interactive course during which early childhood educators are up-skilled with the tools and techniques required to implement and manage an effective ECD program.
• The educators are taught how to use recyclable materials to prepare teaching aids and testing instruments for use in their lessons as well as to enhance their classroom environment to create a stimulating surrounding that awakens creativity and learning.
• The educators are also taught ways to show the children how to use recyclables for their learning activities such as skipping ropes, aprons and so forth.
• The Teachers each received their own learner manual and a basic start-up kit of materials required to create all the essential teaching and evaluation aids.
• Educators are also taught that every child is uniquely created with their own special temperament, personality and character.
• Focus is placed during this course on personal development and introspection of the teachers to find out who they really are. The aim is to equip the teacher by raising their self-esteem and equip them to ensure the children are school ready.
Teaching is a Calling
Being an educator should be a calling or passion, it is something that calls for a loving person, with patience because children need love and care. Lusa taught the educators to know themselves first, sort out their own relationships, have a balanced life, and manage time, so that they can know their learners personally. As educators they need to accept every child, without favoritism and educate them in a loving and safe environment.
The educator must be confident, be honest and trustworthy. We train them that trust and respect starts with the educator and then will work both ways. It also helps if the educator is positive, friendly, bubbly, and energetic and never shows aggressive behavior, like screaming or shouting, to make sure that children feel safe.
Lusa were also able to show them how to resolve different situations when dealing with different kids.
The educators had much fun with the waste material which they recycled through a crafting process into valuable tools to educate and assess the learners.
Lusa would like to thank Air Products for giving the organisation such a wonderful opportunity to do this trainin “We wish this kind of training can be extended to more crèches, as it brings life changing transformation,” says a spokesperson for Lusa.
