The Meranti Project is a MOE-funded personal and professional development programme specially tailored for student teachers. Held over two days in groups of 20, it has the following five-fold objectives:
a) helping student teachers to develop better self-awareness;
b) providing a clearer idea of what National Education (NE) is all about and one’s role in nurturing NE in innovative ways in the classroom;
c) better ideas of working with diversity in the classroom;
d) strategies for coping with being a teacher; and
e) an affirmation of choosing teaching as a career.
With the aid of informal dialogue sessions with both veteran teachers and students, it gives student teachers the opportunity to listen to firsthand experiences of teachers and the perspectives of student learners. The programme also makes use of open sharing sessions and ingenious games to help the student teachers experience the core competencies of social emotional learning, to share their personal aspirations with their peers and to express their opinions in an open and creative environment.
At the end of the programme, student teachers will have a better grasp of the innovative approaches to National Education and be better equipped when they begin their teaching journey upon graduation.