CEBU CITY, Cebu — Some 300 mobile teachers completed recently a week-long national training-workshop conducted by the Department of Education (DepEd) through the Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS) at the Ecotech Center in Lahug district here.

Education Secretary Bro. Armin A. Luistro explained through DepEd Memorandum No. 113, s. 2011 that the training-workshop, participated in by ALS mobile teachers from 17 regions, sought to provide the mobile mentors with basic knowledge, attitude, values and skills necessary for them to “effectively and efficiently perform their crucial roles and responsibilities in remote communities where they are assigned.

Director Carolina S. Guerrero of the BALS (formerly known as Bureau of Non-Formal Education), said mobile teaching was introduced by DepEd seven school years ago to provide basic literacy lessons to school-age children in far-flung villages who cannot enroll in regular elementary schools owing to their distant homes.

Guerrero said a mobile mentor usually travels by foot to a mountain or island village, gathers some 20 to 50 school-age children who are then given basic literacy lessons like reading, writing and arithmetic for some five months using a local chapel, if any, or a tree-shaded area as a classroom.