004 WHAT MATTERS MOST
One of the best things about my work is that it gives me a chance to talk with educators in the field. Principals and teachers, most especially. These encounters allow me to have a better understanding of the realities on the ground and therefore gives me a better appreciation of these realities.
One of the most important thing for me is to find out, from our Educator Empowerment Program (EEP) beneficiaries (principals, teachers), what particular lessons we provide in the program matter to them the most.
Hands down, of course, the overwhelming winner is pedagogy—all pedagogy lessons we provide (Early on, one or two school principals actually thought we teach their teachers nothing but pedagogy). This is understandable, for sure, since this is one area that most teachers require a lot of improvement in, if only to get away from the usual boring lecture that’s been the go-to strategy by so many for so long.
Aside from pedagogy, there’s always a significant interest among beneficiary principals and teachers on classroom management lessons. Again, this is understandable, owing to the fact that this is a major problem for so many (and for sure, contributes to the leading illness among teachers, hypertension).
There’s also a lot of interest in guidance and counseling lessons. I do hope that it’s because these beneficiary teachers share our belief that these lessons have strategic significance to their students’ academic performance (they do).
These Educator Empowerment Program areas—pedagogy, classroom management, and guidance and counseling—form our top three, at least, as far as our beneficiary schools are concerned.
Thankfully, there are a lot of beneficiary schools, particularly in Ilocos Norte, that have paid close attention to our environment education lessons for teachers Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we’ve provided them with lesson plans on environment topics that they could easily use in class. And we’ve been getting a lot of feedback on how our effort in environment education has impacted on their students (I’m sure our partner there, the Foundation for the Philippine Environment, would be pleased).
Interestingly, there are several school principals who appreciate the value of all our lessons, that beyond the importance of teaching EEP topics specific to ECCD, school health, school safety or even values for teachers, they understand that—in the greater scheme of things—going through all these lessons also develops the teacher holistically, both as a person and as a professional. And it’s in these schools—through these principals—that we’ve seen the most significant improvements among teachers.
The EEP was designed to provide a comprehensive curriculum for teachers. We made sure that it covers all the domains and strands of the PPST, the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers mandated by the Department of Education. More than this, however, we know that all our lessons are there for a reason—to make each teacher truly empowered, in their school, their classroom, their community.