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Monday, September 05, 2005
Editorial: Restoring nobility
HOW do you bring back the nobility to teaching?
Once extolled for shaping the country’s achievers and movers, the profession has fallen on hard times.
Recently, teaching was again indicted by Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
According to an Aug. 30 report by Sun.Star Cebu’s Linette C. Ramos, the Cebu City mayor lambasted local education schools for the “poor performance” of their graduates in the tests screening applicants for teaching jobs with the Cebu City Schools Division.
Only eight percent or 92 of the 1,162 applicants qualified.
The results stirred up a furor, with school officials protesting the mayor’s sweeping generalization, which they claimed was premised only on the performance of a few of their graduates taking the tests.
Right stuff
School authorities though told Ramos that they are willing to take up the mayor’s challenge and improve the training of teachers.
What insights can be drawn from the Cebu City Schools Division test results?
For one, City Schools Superintendent Leonilo Oliva emphasized the need for values to reinforce a teacher’s commitment.
“Their inclination towards teaching is very low,” Oliva said of the new graduates’ lack of values.
Standards and ideals, specifically a belief in service, should be prerequisites in a profession that is uniquely placed to mold the moral code of the youth.
This is the insight culled from Metrobank Foundation’s 20 years of honoring outstanding teachers selected from across the nation.
This year’s Outstanding Teachers award went to 10 individuals with varying length of service and expertise in teaching. Their common virtue: service as the essence permeating their teaching.
Obstacle-blind
It is easy for any educator to hide behind the cynical jargon of many studies on Philippine education: longitudinal studies show that the impact of specific school quality variables is reflected in declining educational outcomes.
In more honest terms, this refers to problems besetting all public classrooms: huge class size, poor student-teacher ratio, inadequate or nonexistent instruction materials, lack or absence of minimal basic facilities like water and electricity, and pupils’ poor nutrition affecting aptitude for learning.
But while other teachers regard these as incentives for working abroad or as alibis for their own poor performance, Julia Capulong rose to the challenge posed on her ability and commitment.
According to a special project on the Metrobank Foundation awards published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Capulong had been teaching for only eight years when a sight-impaired child was mainstreamed in her grade 2 class.
The pupil with special needs showed the Padre Mariano Gomez Elementary School teacher the inadequacy of using strategies intended only for regular students. Instead of moaning about the added burden, Capulong pursued a Master of Arts degree in Special Education (Sped)-Teaching the Visually Impaired.
Today, Capulong has developed relevant curricula, as well as teaching, reading and multi-media instructional materials. This is available for future Sped teachers to use.
She continues to teach at the Padre Mariano Gomez Elementary School, where all six visually impaired students in her grades 1-5 classes are in the top 10 list of achievers.
Set up for life
Metrobank Outstanding Teachers 2005 also honors other mentors who pursued their vocation even if it meant commuting via pump boat to a classroom in an island; hiking for two hours to reach schools in remote areas; being trapped in the school for five hours during a clash between soldiers and the New People’s Army; and teaching in a hut so small that when the more than 70 pupils raised their hands, they would touch different parts of their teacher.
More than their skill in imparting knowledge, the Metrobank awardees are distinguished by their will to inspire values that will set up their students for life.
Elnora Ordedor of Dapa National High School in Siargao Island said that meeting a first year high school student who could not read inspired her to hold voluntary remedial classes for slow learners on weekends.
According to the Inquirer supplement, Ordedor was angry with the student’s past teachers for letting him reach high school without caring if he learned or not.
A mentor should not shirk from her duty in nation-building, reflected Ordedor. “I will teach by example and practice what I preach.”
(September 5, 2005 issue)
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