S’thombe Sibiya trains Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners monthly in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Eastern Cape for the past three+ years. She also mentors at five sites in KZN, and is a part of the team at Impande. This is her story.
FROM BEING AN ELOM ASSESSOR TO AN ASSISTANT TRAINER
“The assessor experience, at first, it was challenging. Because we got training. We did our fieldwork and everything. And then, it took like over six months before we did assessments…Then, when we were doing assessments, you know, it’s like you need a refresher. So, it was challenging. Plus, we were doing it in other provinces…And we did that for about six weeks. Because in a day, I was assessing like five kids in a day. So, it was challenging. But, I mean, it had to be done. And we got to meet different children from different walks of life. You embrace…whoever you meet.”
S’thombe was an assessor for a year and then became an assistant trainer. “It was a new, lovely experience for me. Especially here. Because the first training that we did, it was in our training centre, right? So, some of the people, I knew them that we were training. Because we do meet in some meetings…So, here, we’re meeting new people from all over. So, the experience is nice. it’s really nice.”
Becoming an assistant trainer has been an empowering experience for S’thombe; “Yeah, it is empowering. Actually, it has given me other ideas. Like, it has gotten me to a place where I feel like I can even grow further than that. And I hope to grow from here.”
HOW BEING AN ELOM ASSESSOR HAS INFLUENCED TRAINING
S’thombe reflects on how being an ELOM assessor first has influenced how she trains people; “A lot. A lot. A lot. Especially when it comes to understanding the development of kids. ELOM has opened my eyes in the sense of accepting that we don’t develop the same way. But we can do something about that. Hence, since I work with ECD centres that I am mentoring, I try by all means to share the knowledge with them, the knowledge of doing such activities with the kids. Make sure that you cover all domains, you know. Because if they can’t do that, I mean, these kids, they need to have a chance at life.”
MAINTAINING HIGH QUALITY STANDARDS
To ensure that the assessors she trains maintains high quality standards in their assessments, S’thombe mentions “giving them an opportunity all the time to give you feedback on their own challenges. If they tell you this is challenging and maybe you were looking at something else. But yet they also are not feeling confident on something else. Yet you’ve missed it. So, it helps if they also give you feedback of their own. So that you can be able to assist them on that. For instance, the tablet. That takes time. It does. The questioning. That takes skill and time.”
Find out more about becoming an ELOM assessor or training partner
Visit News and Opportunities or email assessors@datadrive2030.co.za to learn more:
