Stairway has had a constructive partnership with the Philippine Department of Education for a very long time, but during the past couple of years, our collaboration has gained even more momentum. A major reason for this development is our child protection online platform with courses, which we have customized for teachers to educate their students on prevention of child sexual abuse and exploitation, and cyber safety.
One of the many advantages to use online technology to inform, train and educate is the large numbers of people we can reach within a short span of time using little human resource. This week, we had the largest volume of people so far to be trained simultaneously, as a batch of 1300 teachers logged into our child protection e-courses for educators. The interactive courses offer built-in quizzes, tests and reflection journals to track and gauge participants’ learning and comprehension, video lessons delivered by resource persons from DepEd, as well as access to discussion forums and downloadable reference materials.
After the first week of training, we have received a lot of overwhelmingly positive feedback from the teachers. We shall spare you from sharing a whole bunch of them, but look at this one, which is indicative of the base level of attitude and understanding most teachers enter the training with. I quote:
“I need to be honest, actually before taking this course, in my mind, the second to blame for this kind of abuse (child sexual abuse and exploitation) is the victim. I am always questioning the victim in my mind. But thanks to this course I am now enlightened. No child deserves to be molested. No child wants to be abused. And as an educator, I shouldn’t tolerate this kind of act. I need to educate children about this kind of matter so they can protect themselves and prevent this kind of assault from happening to them. I am also a mother, and I don’t want my child to experience it either.”
Imagine the potential impact to the number of children this teacher will handle within her professional career as an educator!
Earlier this year, Stairway became licensed and accredited by the National Educators’ Academy of the Philippines, as our child protection e-courses for educators conform to the Philippines Professional Development Standards for Teachers. Upon completion of the courses, DepEd personnel gain Professional Development points, which are required for their licenses and potential promotions. The courses are all asynchronous, so everybody has the flexibility to pick a time of their convenience. They need not use their weekends or vacations to travel to a hotel or conference center with expenses for transportation, food, accommodation and training fees for the course facilitators. Our online platform offers them quality education for their continued professional and personal development at no cost.
Contributed by Ace Diloy, Senior Advocacy Officer, SFI