033 Is It Replicable?
I had the privilege of getting invited to the culminating event of one of our beneficiary schools for our Educator Empowerment Program (EEP). To be more precise, it’s the end-of-school-year event for the program, since they still have four more modules to go to complete the EEP package.
The early morning event at Doña Rosario Elementary School in Quezon City would include all 80 teachers, since everyone is enrolled in EEP (as is the requirement of the program). As expected, we weren’t required to be physically present in the school, which was a bit of a travel, especially during rush hour (Thank you, Covid?). We would attend via Google Meet.
Of course, I was eager to find out how the program had progressed in that particular school. Although I wasn’t expecting much from attending a two-hour session—online, to boot—I actually had a lot of pleasant takeaways from the experience.
It helped that the school prepared interviews—on video—of teachers sharing their EEP experiences. And hearing them speak of how EEP has changed them—from their teaching practices to their relationship with colleagues and all the way to the way they see themselves vis-à-vis their community—I knew that what we have is another success story. I’ve also seen a dramatic change in the teachers’ demeanor during the session, at least, compared to our first encounter with them six months ago, when we launched the program in the school. Compared to what I saw last January, the teachers seemed more relaxed and at ease, more confident even, and definitely were having fun during the two-hour session (and they were not ashamed to show it).
I also sensed the same joy from their principal, Dr. Nancy Ebardaloza, who shared her misgivings about the school’s faculty, the reason why she asked for our help several months ago.
We’ve worked with her twice before, from the start actually. She was principal of Aurora A. Quezon Elementary School when we did our EEP pilot study there. And she was principal of Betty Go-Belmonte Elementary School when it became an EEP beneficiary school of City Savings Bank.
She knew what the EEP can do based on these two experiences.
So when we talked about bringing the program to Doña Rosario ES, I made it a point to remind her the difficulties we had at the start—that she should expect some teachers to doubt the value of our intervention (and of course, doubt her judgment as principal). I also reminded her that these doubters would have a change of heart in no time, as we’ve seen many times over (we clocked it at 6-8 months). She of course knew the tremendous potential of the EEP, and she just needed to be reminded of how things transpired when we implemented the program in her two other schools. We gave her the program free of charge—with each of her 80 teachers getting their own copies of our training modules—and it was a hit! More than that, it was like clockwork. Everyone was happy about doing EEP training after such a short time.
And as Principal Nancy would attest, the impact on ALL her teachers was nothing less than miraculous (and to think that they’re just on the second of six modules!).
Thank you, Principal Nancy. And thank you, Doña Rosario Elementary School. So is the EEP replicable? What do you think?