T4T In Transit

Next Week

bugsytwo — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:05:30 +0000

Three weeks ago, I was planning to go back to GK-Banago to observe what the DepEd representative was doing so I’d know how T4T can help. That class was postponed.

I also missed the second week – I tried to send a text message to the representative but got no reply. I learned later that that class too had been postponed. In the meantime, I found a friend (IGM) who promised to help me see the DepEd Big Boss here in Bacolod City so I can make inquiries about what we can do for the Adult Learning System at GK-Banago.

I guess it’s the timing … really bad timing because anybody and everybody connected with schools are busy preparing for the forthcoming school opening. So the meeting got postponed to another day and yet another and another.

In the meantime, classes at GK-Banago also kept being postponed. The last time I asked AB, she said the lady-tutor could not come because “she had something else to do.” It seems the classes at Banago aren’t in anybody’s list of priorities. That’s really disheartening but it also told me I must hurry!

Finally, IGM sent me a message (via Facebook!) that she’s coming with me to a meeting on Tuesday, June 9, with the DepEd guy who is directly in charge of the ALS. This is the big guy to see about ALS, that was IGM’s message to me. I am excited and happy for GK-Banago (and for T4T!). I hope this meeting pushes through because we can no longer afford to keep on letting time slip by.

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I Moved

bugsytwo — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:47:49 +0000

I decided to permanently move this blog to Teach For Tomorrow (same blog title, different URL). The new URL is teach4tom.wordpress.com. One week from now, I will be deleting this blog.

Hope to see you there!

The Augustinian Accountant’s Creed

bugsytwo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:06:34 +0000

I wrote this ten years ago as a way of reminding my students of the “worthy ideals” that they must strive for as “a Christian, a Filipino and an Augustinian.”

We recited this at the start of each class and each organizational activity. I felt my students’ pride and sincerity each time we stood up to recite the creed. I hope they live by the ideals expressed in this creed.

The Oath To Be Ethical

bugsytwo — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:33:57 +0000

The title of the New York Times article immediately caught my attention: A Promise To Be Ethical In An Era Of Immorality.

This was about Harvard Business School graduates taking a voluntary oath that says their purpose is “to serve the greater good” and that, among others, they will “act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.”

I am very happy about this development. We all know that most of these Harvard biz graduates are going to be leaders of big companies and organizations in the future but the NY Times article also says only 20% of the class took the oath. What about the rest?

I taught Professional Ethics for CPAs for many years to undergraduate students in the Accountancy. To make it easier for them to remember what the Code of Ethics was all about, we used an acronym to summarize how CPAs are expected to deal with the public, their colleagues and their clients. Thus, PHILCO: professional care, honesty, integrity, loyalty, competence and objectivity. (One batch used this acronym for the official organization of accountancy students and substituted “love of God” for “loyalty”.) ** Many other professions and organizations have their own oaths but I think that, even if the words differ, they essentially uphold the same thing: to do what is good for everybody.

What is an oath? Some might say, “I’ll just take it for the heck of it”. What happens if you don’t live by the oath even when it says “I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath“? We only have to look around us to know what the answer to that question is.

Still, I want to believe that emphasizing again and again what we should do and not do, not only as professionals but as human beings, is a good move that we should all encourage and support.

**In 1999, I wrote a short creed (“The Augustinian Accountant’s Creed” that emphasizes love of God, honesty, justice and equity and service), that, as department head for the accountancy, I required the students to recite at the start of each day and at the start of each organizational activity. Later, I modified the daily requirement to a once-a-week requirement (a move that I regretted). I have resigned from that school and I doubt if they still recite the creed today.

A Lesson From Peru

bugsytwo — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:33:47 +0000

There is something that we can learn from here.

Long shot but not impossible.

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To Find A Way

bugsytwo — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:38:14 +0000

If there’s a will, there’s a way.

Located deep in the jungle of Peru’s Great Amazon Basin, the first school to be benefited by Gallery Textiles is accessible only by boat. Here, indigent children currently study in a one-room schoolhouse. There are no books, pencils or paper.

After about fifth grade, only a few lucky children will make the long daily dugout canoe trip to the remote region’s secondary school. For the children not chosen, there will be no more education. As teenagers, they will work the fields and river, along with their elders, in deplorable conditions for the rest of their lives. There are no other options in their subsistence culture.

But first we must find a way.

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Making Winners

bugsytwo — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:33:56 +0000

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate “apparently ordinary” people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people. – K. Patricia Cross

One of the things Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers confirmed to me is the make-or-break power a teacher wields over his/her students. It is awesome, if not frightening to think, how teachers’ selections can determine who gets more attention (and hence more chances of improving or honing his talent/skills) or who gets virtually ignored.

In my days (and I think this is still true today), selecting The Chosen One, a.k.a. the contestant in oration or vocal solo, the Spelling Bee or the math contest, was the teacher’s exclusive prerogative. The favored one then gets specially tutored for the contest. Can you imagine how much advantage one gets over his/her peers if he/she gets selected year after year ? Ergo, the more times you are chosen, the better chances you have for succeeding in the future (read also my post here about 10,000 hours).

This is what Gladwell pointed to as The Matthew Effect, after the Bible passage that says, “For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”

Now think about this: in an ordinary classroom, the brighter ones are usually the most participative – they not only know the correct answers, they also ask a lot of questions (how they can think of 101 questions to ask in 50 short minutes is something that never fails to amaze me!) So what is the alternative of a teacher who is pressed for time?

Mea culpa. As I look back, I must admit that there were many times when I would chose to ask those who I thought could quickly give me the correct answers. But I must state for the record that I did this only because I was usually pressed for time – there were always so many things to discuss but time was always short so, to finish my assigned tasks for the day, I sometimes felt I had to get the Q&A portion over and done with so I could go to the next topic. Not right I know but I had no choice.

Now I must be MORE conscious and careful about selections, i.e. everybody must be given equal chances of participating. This makes teaching even harder but there is no other way. I must remember that each time I make a choice as to who gets to recite or who gets my attention, I am also given an opportunity to make a winner.

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Hard Work Pays

bugsytwo — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:22:46 +0000

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it. – James Garfield

I was never academically good in college. I spent more time actively working for the student government and writing for the school paper and, for a year or two, I played for the school’s varsity team (tuition fee was only one peso a semester for varsity players). I also held a fulltime job – I was a DJ in a music station with working hours that required me to be there as early as 6 a.m. until 1 p.m. and as late as 12 midnight. I went to school in between. Understandably, it took me six years to finish college and I barely passed the CPA board exams. So I consider it a miracle (or a mistake) when my school invited me to teach accounting.

It was therefore not surprising that when I started teaching, I had zero knowledge of what I was supposed to do and just enough (but not a lot) of what to teach. In the first few years of my teaching, I also had tough luck: my first boss wanted to help but didn’t know how to (she was not a CPA), the next boss wanted to help but was always sick, the third boss wasn’t any help at all. I was practically left to my own devices. There were no such things as solutions manuals (if there were any, then I missed them because I didn’t get any until the late, late 90s) and the internet. But there was one thing going for me: I worked hard.

I burned the midnight candle reading and re-reading my book, solving and resolving the problems, practicing my lectures over and over again. It was really, really hard work.

Oftentimes, when I face a lot of problems and am tempted to give up, I look back to those days. Thank God I went through them because now it seems nothing can get harder. I can always get by if I work hard.

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Frustration

bugsytwo — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:51:00 +0000

One baby step and we immediately hit a wall.

Continuing the story about our first visit to GK-Banago, when we left the village, RN and I were very excited but we had no idea how we could jumpstart our program so I asked AB if we could go over and observe an ALS class. She said yes, on Monday at 1:30. But on Monday morning, she sent an SMS saying the teacher from DepEd could not make it because of Brigada Eskwela. So, no class again for the adults.

I could not help remembering what AB said about the dwindling number of students – they were discouraged since classes could not be held regularly. (DepEd’s too busy for these adults? Or the ALS is not in their list of priorities?)

I told AB I wanted to get in touch with the teacher so I can ask her what T4T could do for these classes. She gave me a cellphone number and I sent the DepEd person a message but didn’t get any reply.

I didn’t want to waste time sitting here and waiting for next Monday not even knowing if the teacher would show up or not. So I surfed the net to gather more info from the DepEd site. There was no mention of ALS there and some information had not even been updated (the side banner tagged as EducNews bore the date Jan. 1-31, 2009). Ironically, this same government agency is launching its “internet connectivity project”.

At this point, I am exasperated but I know I should brace myself for more walls and even deadends. It’s not fun having to deal with the government.

First Baby Step, Part 3

bugsytwo — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:24:56 +0000

Continued from this post …

I was happy talking to AB. She impressed me as intelligent and someone who knows her work well. When I asked how we could help, she summarized their problem in a few sentences. She said the ALS – the Adult Learning System – had people from the education department visiting the village regularly to prepare the students for the government exams in October. But since there were other barangays to attend to, they no longer come three times a week but only once a week. This has discouraged many of the students so now, there are only 15 students left. That broke my heart.

AB said the government people teach “conversational English” but she felt this wasn’t effectively working. She believes the students would need “basic English” and “basic Math” instead. RN and I looked at each other. I guess we were both thinking of the same thing: English for me, Math for him but can we both do this without any help from other people? Many other things were on my mind as I listened to AB: do I have enough time to come here regularly – at least twice a week for 1-2 hours per visit – considering that I will also be teaching in the coming semester and RN would be away reviewing in Manila for the CPA licensure exams in October? What materials would I need? What are the things that I must do to prepare myself for this? No, thank God, I wasn’t thinking about the heat and the dust. RN and I had already made up our minds to help them. We’re going to do this and “not count the cost” (St. Ignatius’ prayer).

There was an urgent need for more tutors, AB summed everything up. Okay, we assured her, we’ll try to see what we can do. We’ll come back next week and talk to you again. She was profuse in her thanks (later she sent me an SMS that said “it was nice of you to come and thank you for your initiative to help”.) RN and I were happy … and very excited.

Teach for Tomorrow had just taken its first baby step.