More young people are joining the teaching profession through the Teaching Assistantships Project, a project under Inspire Educate and Empower. Inspire, Educate and Empower Rwanda (IEE Rwanda), formerly International Education Exchange, is a locally registered not-for-profit non-governmental organization. For the year 2023, 630 students were selected to be part of the program in different schools. The project is designed to attract the brightest students to the teaching profession and to equip them with relevant experiences and skills. Assistant teachers selected due to their outstanding performance were, each, given laptops on Friday, January 20, to facilitate them in their teaching. In an interview with The New Times, Sarah Nikuze, an assistant teacher who teaches Biology in senior three, said: “Being a teacher at my age inspires my fellows especially female students who want to do sciences. Nikuze said that they are going to help learners be more interested in their studies by doing more research and keeping up with new trends in the subjects they teach. Emmanuel Iradukunda, a high school graduate and an assistant teacher, said that they are going to work with teachers in their respective schools to improve the quality of education. Iradukunda said: Knowing the challenges that students face; as a people who have been in school, recently, we are going to help the students since we know their strength and weaknesses. The Head teacher of Groupe Scolaire Akumuhigo, Eldebrand Nzabandora, said that: “This contributes in encouraging the students to perform well and is going to be helpful in terms of working day to day with students.” Esther Benadamu, a Physics assistant teacher, is glad she has this opportunity of being given a platform to inspire fellow girls to dream more. She said: We will act as role models to them. They are our colleagues, they know us, which will make it easy for them to seek help from us. They will be encouraged to work hard. Emmanuel Murenzi, the country director of Inspire Educate and Empower, said that the teaching profession has a few females. He hopes that the teaching assistantships project will help increase the numbers to have a gender balance. Murenzi said: “These assistant teachers spend six months training in a classroom; they will join University with experience, at the same time inspiring and serving as mentors to their colleagues.” Focus is on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to encourage more students to join sciences.
