CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines – The Department of Education (DepEd) has deployed a total of 377 mobile teachers for the past six years in Eastern, Central and Western Visayas to provide basic literacy lessons to school-age children in remote villages in the three regions, it was learned here recently.

Director Carolina S. Guerrero of the Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS), formerly known as the Bureau of Non-Formal Education, said during a national conference of regional alternative learning system (ALS) chiefs and assistant chiefs that DepEd, through BALS, employs mobile tutors to teach basic literacy skills to children who cannot enroll in regular elementary schools owing to the far distance of their homes.

Guerrero explained that a mobile teacher, armed with appropriate instructional modules, travels usually by foot to a remote barangay or sitio, gathers some 20 to 50 children and group them together in a non-graded class through the help of local leaders and parents using a barangay chapel, if any, or a tree-shaded area as a classroom.

For a period of about five months, Guerrero said, the mentor teaches the children basic literacy skills like reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic (or the so-called three Rs), with some livelihood lessons integrated into the subjects.