019 Oh, Henry!
It was a cool Baguio evening. I was with education secretary Butch Abad at the SPED School to meet with local education stakeholders to discuss the Schools First Initiative, our flagship program to promote school based management. Before the start of the event, I saw someone familiar.
At that time, I didn’t know his name. I just see him, regularly, at Brent International School where my twin nephews studied.
He approached me with a warm “Bro!”
Yes, he’s the same person in Brent (turns out, his son is a sixth grader there). And he’s an active education stakeholder in the city.
His name is Henry, Henry Tenedero.
The event was quite uneventful. Very straightforward. We got to explain Schools First (and SBM). We got the support we wanted from the local private sector stakeholders. That was that.
The next day, Abad was to meet with yet another group of education stakeholders—internal stakeholders—including principals and teachers serving in public schools around the city.
To my surprise, Henry was there too. And he immediately approached me, formally but quite warmly, with yet another “Bro!”
We talked casually for a brief moment, recounting the positive outcomes of last night’s meeting. Our friendly chat was interrupted when his name was called onstage.
“Sandali lang, bro… tawag na ako!”
The next thing I knew, he was on stage, by his lonesome, enthralling an auditorium filled with education professionals with his quick wit and his rather deep discussion on teaching and learning styles.
Gone was the prim and proper Henry from last night (or the prim and proper Henry from Brent). His was a totally different persona onstage. And the audience responded well.
They responded to his rhetorical questions. They nodded in unison when he made an important point. They listened. They laughed (quite loudly). And you can sense that they didn’t want him to stop.
What a great speaker!
He was the perfect opening act, I thought, for the keynote speaker, my boss Abad.
That memorable moment, in April 2005, marked the start of what Bogart referred to in “Casablanca” as a beautiful friendship.
As we were both based in Baguio then, we’d end up meeting—almost daily—at Camp John Hay to discuss education reform, him from his Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles perspective, and me from the perspective of Glasser’s Non-Coercive Approach that I was fascinated with in those days. We knew then that we’d hit it off.
And we knew that there’s a lot we can do—together—to help improve the quality of education in the country.
We’ve worked together in so many occasions. And he’s particularly supportive of everything I do, whether it was as part of my work at the Department of Education or it’s in my advocacy work through the Educator Empowerment Program (EEP). As much as he is a good friend, he’s very much a part of who I am as an education reformist.
And I look forward to each opportunity to be with him—to share a meal, to talk education or even to just see him onstage enthralling audiences and showing them what’s it like to be a great communicator and educator.