The Sunday Mail
The icon of Africa, renowned educationist, a leader with supelative virtues, the President of Zimbabwe once asserted: “There is need to equip learners with knowledge skills and values that guarantee economic growth and increased opportunities for empowerment creation, well-rounded citizens who are relevant nationally and competitive globally.”
STEM is a philosophy grounded in the solution of problems from a multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary perspective, inter-alia it should cater for the science technology, engineering and maths aspects of education. The STEM-based approach to education included the integration of all subject matter that may be brought to bare on problems such as the environmental, social, regulatory, legal, political and economic aspects. This is the strategy used by engineers to solve complex and general problems and for this reason engineering and its study is important in any STEM programme.
STEM-based problem solving will help students understand the process by which each new idea becomes a new product and how products are driven by the consumer wants and needs. Teaching of STEM principles when properly done will be thouroughly integrated with the subject matter like language and communication skills since these are the bedrock of all other skills needed.
Seke Teachers’ College is fully striding ahead with a clear vision of the training of STEM-compliant, knowledgeable, well-skilled innovative, dedicated and patriotic primary school classroom practitioners.
This is concretised through a primary school teacher training curriculum that has been fully stemitised to enhance modern pedagogical and technological competencies grounded into the unhu/ubuntu, designed to producing cutting-edge teachers for the future educational needs of Zimbabwe, fashioned by the overall ZimAsset policy.
With this aim in mind, all current student teachers are passing through STEM-itised professional studies and are making use of the refurbished laboratories by taking special focus on in depth studies of theory and practice of teaching pure sciences at primary school level. Thus students are going through the rigours of being moulded into primary school Mathematics specialist teachers.
One group of 58 students has taken advantage of the available state-of-the-art ICT resources and are pioneering the specialisation in computer science to become specialist primary school ICT teachers.
Another thrust in this direction is the transformation of the institution into an e-learning and training centre of primary school teacher training excellence methodologies buttressed by e-learning and training capacitated staff. The resource centre has now transformed into an e-library with the installation of a 24-hour wifi facility and interactive boards in the lecture rooms.
To support the STEM initiative, the teaching of Music has evolved into the imparting of music production and recording skills in our student teachers so that they will go out into the world being able not just to teach music but to identify musical talent and nurture it up to recording and marketing stages.
To drive the STEM and e-learning initiatives, the college has constructed a 2 000 seater multi- purpose shed, and renovated all lecture rooms. The institution has also put in place a 24-hour standby electric power solutions that include the purchase and installation of 300 and 200kV diesel generators, a unique all-night outdoor solar power lighting system and for the college dining facility, a bio-waste digester plant and a kind of its own incinerator.
In addition to these, the institution is actively upgrading to creating a serene learning environment fed by adequate borehole water supplies. This has resulted in the creation of lush lawn and ornamental bushes throughout the campus.
All these STEM strides are fully protected by a modern CCTV security system as the college surges ahead into the future.
SEKE: Pacing ahead, pacing forward, pacing for greater heights!
