THE Department of Education, Schools Division of Silay City, through the Curriculum Implementation Division conducted the “Division Writeshop for Selected Learning Resource Writers” on January 20-21 and Writeshop on Development of Contextualized Storybooks on January 30-31.
Yours truly was requested by Ma’am Cynthia G. Demavivas, schools division superintendent of DepEd Silay, to be the resource person. Ma’am Cynthia and I started as classroom teachers at Dona Montserrat Lopez Memorial High School. She went up in the DepEd hierarchy while I shifted to local tourism to become the supervising tourism operations officer of Silay City.
The first writeshop was attended by 40 teachers handling classes in the Kindergarten, Grade I, Grade II and Grade III. The second batch was composed also 40 of teachers from Grade IV, Grade V and Grade VI. The activity was facilitated by Carmel Joy Aujero, EPS-LRMDS with the assistance of Joy Nakamura and Jerry Baguios.
The objectives of the training-workshop are to strengthen the skills and competencies of learning resource writers in contextualizing short stories responsive to local community setting, and to develop contextualized short stories. The Learning Resource Management and Development System (LRMDS) of DepEd-Silay would like to come up with original short stories in all grade levels that are Silay-based.
The local themes are based on the compilation I have made... “Silay Cultural History” and “Negros Heritage and Tradition”. This was reinforced by “Silay: Profile of a City Where Life is Sweet and the Past is Forever” and “Hiligaynon Literature” (used for MUGNA Project of the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts).
We started with the film presentation “Rediscovering Silay” (a documentary about Silay participated by local artists and government employees with the assistance of Miss Charet Locsin). We also showcased the best food and delicacies of Silay because according to the late Prof. Doreen Gamboa-Fernandez (a Silaynon writer on food), “You can better contextualize who you are if you know what you cook and eat based on the culture of your town.”
The training-writeshop was fun and funny. The sense of humor permeated the atmosphere as the participants prepared their outline and identified their themes, setting, characters, plot, climax, structure, style and tone, and the end of the story. I gave them chances also to explore “The World Around Us”. I want their outputs to have the “usual values” present in the daily lives of the readers.
The participants were provided with my own Mother Tongue short stories... “Si Baragtingaw Namunit” and “Ang Hitabo sang Cinco de Noviembre 1898”. Each participant was encouraged to produce three “masterpieces”. Some have even provided us with five outputs. The participants came to realize that with proper motivation they can be “buen escritores” (good writers).
I was assisted by the best Filipino and English teachers who acted as Learning Resource Editors. They are Jenelyn Navajas, Cristina Loredo, Rodeliza Abainza, Edwin Pameroyan, Araceli Eco, Roselyn Pacete and Rina Rose Perez. Two hundred forty Filipino and English short stories have been submitted by the participants after the outputs have been validated and qualified for publication.
The outputs we have produced will be utilized during the illustrator workshop and later to be adopted as classroom materials. Good stories can be excellent if coupled with good illustrations...and we are doing it here at DepEd-Silay. We are a bit ambitious but the team dreams of joining short story competition in the regional and national levels.
We hope that our local government in Silay will take interest in this project. The local officials can allocate a budget for the printing of storybooks for our kindergarten classes and elementary school pupils. DepEd-Silay looks forward for an anticipated favor.