Teacher notes importance of student support

Youth & Careers

Students need guidance in order to control their behaviour, a primary school teacher in East Sepik says.
Joshua Moish told The National yesterday that at his school, St Mary’s Primary School in Wewak, students were taught skills to be organised both academically and in life through the Lassallian Youth Ministry.
“We teach our students three basic principles of faith, service and community,” Moish said.
He said students were divided among those principles. Those that know how to play musical instruments or carry out faith-related activities are put under faith.
Those under service, applied their skills learnt in their classrooms to organise class or school activities like collecting rubbish, classroom beautification and others.
“We’ve seen that when we started teaching our students to apply those skills with the guidance of God, they tend to improve in their social lives and academically,” Moish said.
He said there were also improvements in their behaviour.
Moish said the ministry encouraged teachers to teach Christian and human education to children in schools so that they were nurtured at a young age.
The Lasallian Youth Ministry is a Catholic ministry that is introduced in schools that provide teacher enrichment in terms of student discipline and teaching.
According to Moish, the ministry branched out from Port Moresby into Wewak in 2009. “It was founded by the St John De LaSalle and was introduced to us in 2009,” he said. Moish said there were other Catholic schools in the province that were also members of the ministry.
“The schools that are involved in this ministry include Turubu, Maprik, Karasau, Walis and Tarawai primary schools,” he said.
Senior teacher Salvatore Wieng said also under the ministry, they provided in-service training to teachers.