A Call For Academic Break

 

“Okay lang ba mag 3^rd year, kung walang natutunan?”

These are the viral posts from the Biliran Province State University (BiPSU) students on their social media accounts in Facebook. As an instructor of the state university, it saddens me to see the said post and it is quite disappointing to my end.

Am I not enough? Are my colleagues not doing their job? Do our activities not effective? I asked and challenged myself to the point of thinking the said post all over again before I sleep for like a week.

After my discernment, I realized that teachers and students are not at fault with those thoughts, but rather we need to blame it to the system itself.

State Universities and Colleges in the country suffered a lot during the pandemic. They came up with the system of learning called flexible learning. The flexible learning involves digital and non-digital technology and does not necessarily require to be connected to the internet. It has three modes of learning: online, offline, and blended learning. According to the Commission on Higher Education, online learning is an electronic-based set-up which uses available online classrooms for the delivery of instruction just like the Learning Management System Moodle of the Biliran Province State University. Offline learning does not use internet connectivity at all. The learning is done through printed modules and use of digital forms such as video and audio presentations placed in storage devices. Lastly is blended learning which is the combination of both offline and online.

Is it effective or not?

With the recent flaks of the students, I could say that it is not effective. The one that could evaluate the system and/ or policy are the stakeholders who are beneficiaries of the said system. There are a lot of reasons why this kind of educational system failed. Maybe because of the facilities for our school and stakeholders, maybe the disruption that they could get studying at their houses, or maybe the distraction of having it online. Nobody knows. But one thing for sure, it is because of pandemic fatigue or worst the pandemic burnout.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession have negatively affected many people’s mental health and created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness and substance use disorders. During the pandemic, there are a lot of reported anxiety and depression. A KFF Health Tracking Poll from July 2020 also found that many adults are reporting specific negative impacts on their mental health and well-being, such as difficulty sleeping (36%) or eating (32%), increases in alcohol consumption or substance use (12%), and worsening chronic conditions (12%), due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. As the pandemic wears on, ongoing and necessary public health measures expose many people to experiencing situations linked to poor mental health outcomes, such as isolation and job loss. (Panchal, Kamal, Cox, and Garfield)

While knowing this as I conducted my research study on covid-19 pandemic, I realized that the buzz about the opening of classes for the next Academic Year is not a good idea at all, worst is it will worsen the problem more.

I chatted my colleagues on the possible opening of the classes this August as final examination for the 2^nd semester will about to end this July. If you do the math, yes it is correct, the BiPSU administration is planning not to have a summer break for this year. A friend of mine who is an official of the BiPSU administration cited the long month break that we had at the start of the pandemic as a defense. However, it is enough not to put a break?

Absolutely not. Academic break is a must. In fact, summer classes is part of the academic break per se because not all students will go to school or if they will, there is only a limited courses to be enrolled with.

Given the literature saying about pandemic burnout and pandemic fatigue, there is a must for our schools like BiPSU to have academic break prior to the start of the next academic year. This year is not a vacation for the students and teachers but this will be an opportunity to them to finish all their backlogs before starting again for another battle. I cannot imagine what level of anxiety it could bring to them if there is no break. Imagine multiple of activities not yet finished and here you are, receiving another tasks to be complied at the end of the four months- another burden to work, to think, and to take.

Education is a not a race and every one of us deserves to take some rest, meditate, and discern. Academic Break is a must!

Flexible Learning is anti-poor

 

Even if our schools are ready, do we think if our stakeholders will be ready also? Did our students learn from this new set-up? Or we are just making half-baked students for compliance of our educational system?

If we did not ask these questions before implementing the new system in our education amidst the covid-19 pandemic, then we are defined with these two words: hypocrite and incompetent.

Before we will go down deeper to our arguments, let’s first discuss the topic on what flexible learning is and its purpose in our educational system.

According to the Commission on Higher Education, flexible learning involves digital and non-digital technology and does not necessarily require to be connected to the internet. It has three modes of learning: online, offline, and blended learning. Online learning is an electronic-based set-up which uses available online classrooms for the delivery of instruction just like the Learning Management System Moodle of the Biliran Province State University. Offline learning does not use internet connectivity at all. The learning is done through printed modules and use of digital forms such as video and audio presentations placed in storage devices. Lastly is blended learning which is the combination of both offline and online.

State Colleges and Universities in the country did everything to prepare on their opening of classes amidst the pandemic. In BiPSU, we have consultations with the different stakeholders including the external partners, local government units, teachers, students, and even the parents. The school promised to set-up learning kiosk situated in the eight municipalities in the province. Faculty members were assigned in these kiosk in order to guide students who do not have gadgets and give softcopy modules for them to store and accomplish the activities given by their instructors. The kiosk is a place where the university set-up computers for the students who don’t have gadgets in this educational system. Aside from it, BiPSU also purchased a Learning Management System in the name of Moodle for the students to log in and do their activities online in a synchronous and asynchronous set- up. Moreover, college instructors are asked to make a syllabus and modules of their assigned courses before the classes start. And lastly, every SUCs promised to embody the promotional hastag, #NoStudentIsLeftBehind with a lot of speeches in every occasions about this promising the students that they will not be left behind.

Great, isn’t it?

It feels like we are living in a new normal set-up without any distractions at all and we already overcome the pandemic in terms of our educational system because of this flexible learning implementation.

But after a year, what really happened?

The implementation of the flexible learning, not just in BiPSU but all over the country sucks. Even if every SUCs implemented blended learning, everyone still relies on the internet connectivity. As a student, you cannot submit the activities without the internet connection. Thus, everything in flexible learning particularly the blended learning still requires an internet connection. But how about those who don’t have internet connection? Many students cried foul as they are looking for internet signals every now and then attending their synchronous and asynchronous classes. Some students in the province will travel from one barangay to the other just to find signals. Some will climb trees. And some will go to the mountainous barangays. How about the safety of these students? Are schools accountable if in worst case scenario, students will get hurt in the process?

The idea of having kiosk in the province was great. However, after the series of orientations and programs, the implementation did not happened. It is also a burden of the instructors to have a duty in the different kiosk. They are bombarded by different works every single day. They work beyond their four folds of their workload- instruction, research, extension and production. The idea of kiosk became just a propaganda tool of #NoStudentIsLeftBehind campaign. But in reality, there is no such implementation and students did not benefited for it. What really happened? Most of the students struggle and some of them dropped from the classes. They chose to have some work and help their parents in their living amidst the pandemic. Imagine yourself with no avenue of working with your activities and no internet connection to cope up with, how can you think of nobody will be left behind despite of our economic instability? How can they finish their works?

Both the institution and the students are not yet ready to this kind of set-up. It drew flak to the social media by the students who are disappointed in the implementation. Many BiPSU students posted “okay lang ba mag 3^rd year, kung walang natutunan?” Seeing these kind of posts are disheartening and disappointing. How can I blame them? Pandemic fatigue is all over us and our education officials, not just in BiPSU but including DepEd and CHEd, instead of solving the problem, just justifies the incompetence that they could give to its stakeholders. Many prop are given in order to justify its compliance in our educational system. Producing a half-baked students is not the quality that we want to produce. If instructors will go hardline with their lessons, students will suffer. If we keep things easy, students will not learn. Then how can we solve this kind of problem then?

          As of this writing, many SUCs including BiPSU posted a press release on the millions of budget approved by the CHEd to have SMART classrooms. These are classrooms with fully equipped facilities that could benefit instructors but how about our students?

This is the question that I asked to one of the facebook posts of my colleague about flexible learning. Assuming but not conceding that having this SMART classroom could provide us quality preparedness for our flexible learning, are our stakeholders will also be ready? The answer of the question must be yes. If it is no, then having SMART classrooms is not also effective to our stakeholders and it cannot solve the struggles of our stakeholders towards flexible learning.

Flexible learning is anti-poor. Poor students don’t have access to internet connections, don’t have the opportunity to learn, and don’t have the means survive. In our department alone, almost 15 students chose to drop their courses because of this learning set-up. Most of them find work in order to survive in these pandemic.

Education officials and the Philippine government as a whole must think of a solution to solve this problem. SUCs across the country should be equipped with proper facilities such as printers for modules, wifi connection, smart classrooms and others. Not just that, since there is already an implementation of DICT’s free wifi connection, then why not the government should implement this mainly for the students who would like to study in this set-up. Perhaps, Vice President Leni Robredo is correct on saying that the PH government should declare educational crisis. Although the context of the beloved VP is all about the World Bank ranking, this step could also give the root cause problem solved and perhaps improved the flexible learning implementation in the country.

The idea is great, however the implementation sucks. If we cannot solve this implementation to our flexible learning set- up, it will always remain anti-poor and students will forever struggle to this mechanism.

Protect the Sentinel

No, we are under attacked. And we need you to protect it.

Every time I hear the word “press freedom”, I often recall my reaction way back in 2018 when a PCOO official answered my question about press freedom violations happening in our country. “The press is free. They are not under attacked,” the said official explained like it seems so much annoyed with my question in front of the participants in that seminar hosted by the said government agency.

It’s quite alarming to hear it from the agency run by former journalists like its Secretary Martin Andanar. What is more alarming are the number of campus press advisers, campus journalists and media practitioners (such as National Press Club) agreeing to the said notion.

According to Chua (2006), the Philippines is the only nation in the region that has a constitutional protection and laws in exercising freedom of the press. Despite the circumstance, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) documented that the Philippines is among the top five of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists in the year 2017. Reporters Without Borders also known as Reporters sans frontières (RSF), is an international non-profit organization based in Paris, France that defends the freedom of information and the press throughout the world.

In fact, RSF’s data where used by the administration and Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Andanar in lauding their efforts showing concerns to the press by establishing Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) on October 11, 2016. (Musico, 2018) However, the article published in the official website of the Philippine News Agency run by PCOO was misleading. Yes, it is true that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) evaluated the country with an 'improved status' in its 2018 Global Impunity Index, but it does not change the fact that we are still ranked 5^th among countries worldwide who are enjoying the culture of impunity and these murderers of journalists unprosecuted to court.

The press freedom indexed of our country as documented by Reporters Without Borders is slipping every year. From 133^rd in the year 2018, it was assessed 134^th in 2019 and slips two places this year with 136^th place out of 180 countries across the world.

Why is press freedom important and why do countries need it?

The country has a long history of press freedom violations and it worsens today. From the shutting down and controlling various media organization to the killing, torturing, and physical attacks the media practitioners endure during Martial law, the culture of impunity, oppression and tactics to silence the press continues up until now.

The administration is in the act of shutting down ABS-CBN and Rappler, they were prohibiting Rappler’s journalist Pia Ranada to cover the press conferences at Malacañang, the widespread disinformation that favors them using political trolls around the new media, threatening journalists to lose their jobs through an accreditation of the journalists that could be weaponized to silence them, series of verbal attacks made by the President against them on national tv and not to mention his avid supporters as well, series of red-baiting such as calling National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) members as NPAs, killings that up until now are in searched for justice. These are some of the violations observed during this administration and they will just say that “they are not attacked”? Although yes, we can freely write and document our stories, however the chilling effect of being scared and to be silenced is still there and it greatly impacts the lives of every journalist today.

Press freedom is crucial in the society’s development. According to Tandoc and Takashi (2012), press freedom leads a country to happiness and environment quality. If you will observe, the countries who are enjoying the top spot of the World Press Freedom index are those develop and progressive countries such as Finland, Norway, Denmark and others. (most of them are European countries) Press Freedom upholds democracy in the country, empowers the watchdog in our society that could lead to transparency, accountability and good governance, and expresses the voiceless people in the community that need to be heard.

In celebration of the World Press Freedom Day, the theme “Journalism without fear or favour” reminds us to fight with our journalists in their struggle for genuine press freedom. We need to recognize them more than we have recognized their efforts before. We need to appreciate them and give them solidarity amid the attacks and the fear of losing their role to society. United Nations General Assembly declared May 3 as World Press Freedom Day marking the anniversary of 1991 Windhoek Declaration, a statement of free press principles in order to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind the government of their duty to respect and uphold press freedom enshrined under Article 19 of 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The struggle for genuine freedom does not end. We need to hold the line. Give solidarity and Protect the sentinel at all costs. Above all, we must remember that journalists don’t need us the most, it’s a matter of we need them more, more than we could ever think of. 

References:

Cepeda, M. (2019). Philippines down 1 spot in 2019 World Press Freedom Index. Retrieved from: https://www.rappler.com/nation/228451-philippines-ranking-2019-world-press-freedom-index

CNN Philippines (2020). Philippines falls two places in press freedom index. Retrieved from: https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/22/Philippines-press-freedom-index-2020.html

De Guzman, C. (2018). PH dips in 2018 World Press Freedom Index ranking. Retrieved from:  https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/04/26/PH-2018-World-Press-Freedom-Index-ranking.html

Gavilan, J. (2017). Philippines 'deadliest country' in Asia for journalists in 2017 – media watchdog. Retrieved from:  https://www.rappler.com/nation/191744-philippines-deadliest-country-journalists-asia-reporters-without-borders-2017-report

Musico, J. (2018). PH out of top 5 deadliest countries for media in 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1057123

Rappler (2018). Despite improved status, PH ranks 5th on Global Impunity Index. Retrieved from: https://www.rappler.com/nation/215795-philippines-ranking-global-impunity-index-2018

Tandoc, E. & Takahashi, B. (2012).The complex road to happiness. The influence of human development, a healthy environment and a free press. Social Indicators Research, 1(113), 537-550. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0109-6.

Witchelle, E. (2018). CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free. Retrieved from: https://cpj.org/reports/2018/10/impunity-index-getting-away-with-murder-killed-justice.php

I survived!

It almost went over! I felt I can't finish it anymore.

This is my second semester for the PTC program at University of the Philippines- Open University. In this semester, I struggled a lot.

This is the first time that I was disappointed with myself as a student. I am always chill on making my preparations. There are a lot of problems that I encounter- family problems where I will almost be the breadwinner, work where we have no summer as we faced a lot of accreditations done by AACCUP for our department, and life where I struggled managing my time. All in all, it is like I had more than five submissions that I passed late including this article. I feel so dumb, mediocre, and giving everything up. However, with all these struggles, I still got a lot of things that I've learned.

Learning this course gives me good morale and boost my confidence in teaching. Learning theories of learning is an essential topic for an instructor to learn. As an educator, it gives me insights and understanding to the classroom setting with the use of behaviorism, constructivism, cognitivism and information- processing. These learning theories help me to craft learning activities as well as assessments for my students to give them the quality of education that they deserved.

With this, I observed that I am now more effective in imparting my knowledge to them using my knowledge in this PTC program. I am still looking forward to more journey for the last semester. I need to reorganize myself in order not to have late submissions in the next semester.

Currently, I feel relieved that this will be the last thing to do for this course. However, I am threatened not to pass this course. The struggle is real in my life. However, with God's grace and determination not to surrender. I will make this life keep going and seek to pass the licensure examination in the future.

All I can say right now is, I survived!


Theories of Learning

I am Constructivist!

How constructivist am I? How can I become a better constructivist?  Should I bother to try? How may I influence education practice to shift towards constructivist ideology and practice? Should I?

These are the questions that I ponder after understanding and reading our modules about constructivism. We studied and read modules about the four major theories of learning, these are behavioural, social, constructivist and cognitive. Of all the four major theories of learning, my way of handling the classroom, my perception of the learning process, and my methods of teaching my students are more likely in a constructivist approach. 

Constructivism is a student-centred approach where learners are the ones who will create and make their knowledge with the help of the teachers as facilitators. According to Jonassen (1991), this theory applied to the development of learning environments such as focusing approaches to solve real-life situations and problems. 

Until this very moment that I knew constructivism is a kind of approach that I want to have. As I evaluate my strategies and activities on how I impart my knowledge for the past three years, I learned that I have a lot of theory- approaches that I applied such as cognitive, social and constructivists. However, it more on the approach of constructivism. I only apply and create my own learning strategies out of my professors' style way back in college. Most of the time, I see to it that learning must be explored by the students and I will only be the facilitator of knowledge. In my class, before the start of the formal discussions in the first semester, I gave my students an outline of the topics or subjects that we will be discussing in the particular course. Students are highly encouraged to research and deliver their know-how of a certain topic in the class in an oral recitation so that other students can interact and give more inputs about it. Aside from this, I would always incorporate real-life situations and problems in my class. I know that the best knowledge that I could give to them are not the definitions and theories that they will memorize every now and then but to equip themselves and be prepared to the future endeavours in their life. 

Although I already classify myself as a constructivist, I also need some adjustments and eat more things to have a better approach. I need to align my learning activities to help the communities in our small province. Most of my activities are an eye-opener of the societal problems however outputs are just for submission and compliance. I can do better by dedicating it to the community and using the knowledge so that we can contribute something to the society as a whole such as conducting researches addressing the needs of the community and providing outputs that we could use as extension services. Our knowledge will just be nothing if we won't dedicate ourselves in serving the community. 

"Ang aklat ng isang tunay na mag-aaral ay ang lipunang kanyang kinabibilangan, ang kanyang guro ay ang mamamayan, at ang kanyang pagsusulit ay ang pagsasagawa ng mga mapaglayang pagkilos" -Jose Pepe Alcantara 

Improving our constructivist approaches is important in the teaching-learning process. It is necessary for me to be better with my constructivist type of strategies and activities. As what the former Department of Education secretary said that education is the solution to solve the cancer of society. It is important for me as an educator to dedicate my learnings for the development of our motherland and to influence my students to do the same. It is actually easy for us to memorize, to know and understand things, but it not easy for us to give attention and dedicate ourselves to serve the whole nation.

Based on the observation in our educational system, our education practice should be improved. Most of the teachers are still using the traditional cognitive approach. Enhancing cognitivism is not wrong especially for those programs which have board examinations, however, it is also important for us to empower our cognitivism ideology in order to give an active atmosphere and to have active learners in the classroom, to understand and know the real-life problems in our society and to help the society as the future of the nation to bring progress and development using the knowledge and their capabilities that they gained in the institution. 

Intelligence will be useless if we won't use it. Knowledge will be inefficacious if we won't apply it. Education will be nothing without serving the community.

Releasing Piaget and Vygotsky In Me

Jean Piaget’s works and Lev Vygotsky’s works grounded two major strands in Constructivist
Learning Theory. Both psychologists gave different constructivist views. The former had his
cognitive constructivist approach while the latter had his social cognitive approach. However,
as a learner and educator, what are the past experiences that I’ve failed to learn and facilitate
and how I cope with that right now?

Cognitivist Learning Theory is a learner-centred approach where people learn through their
experiences in the learning environment and teachers acted a role of a guide and facilitator of
learning. Knowing the works of both psychologists benefit my understanding of how to learn
and how to impart my knowledge at the same time. This theory is similar to what we have
practising right now in our institution- the Outcomes-based education. Dr. Carlo Magno from
De La Salle University introduced OBE in our institution as relatively similar to this theory.

As a teacher with no background in education studies, I also failed a couple of times in
facilitating learning for others. I used to spoon feed my students with the lessons and in fact
with the information in their activities. Scaffolding as a method is ineffective this time. In fact,
one scenario when we competed in the documentary competition, instead of guiding my
students to do documentaries, I ended up doing the whole production for them and they end
up doing nothing. This failure gives me guilt upon learning in this module. 

I learned in the module that CLT has two major principles- learning shall be an active process
and learning must be meaningful.  As an educator, I now understand that my approach made
my students passive in a learning environment. I need to fully implement OBE this time and
not to spoon feed the lessons in my class. My role as an educator is the facilitator of learning.
Students and learners must also do their job in the learning process. It is not all about teachers
giving everything to their students but on how students give themselves and make themselves
productive in the learning environment. 

It is always been a challenge for a teacher on how to teach his/her students. This coming semester,
I will be releasing all my knowledge in this course. I will be applying all theories and will make
learning activities and strategies that will make my students easily understand our lessons. I will
release the psychologists in me. . . their theories, works, and learnings. 

Learn to Improve!

One of the reasons why I enrolled and studied my education units in this distance learning university is to enhance my teaching strategies and develop myself as a mentor of the college students in our beloved university.

Enrolling in this course while working is not an easy task to have. Every week is a struggle for me to finish my assignments at the same time, finish my work. However, I see it as a positive response to build myself as I continue the legacy of my parents, relatives, and grandfather as a teacher.

In this module, I learned a lot of Cognitive Learning Theories, particularly in the information processing approach. I learned the three theories which are information processing theory- gives an idea that the human mind is like a computer in the learning process, dual coding theory- assumes that cognition is with verbal associations and visual representations, and cognitive load theory- the load should not exceed to the capacity of the learner.

These theories give me a head on how to put up my learning strategies, assessments, and discussions of my class this coming August. It gives me an understanding that I did not experience for the long three years in the academe. With this knowledge, I already know the various areas that I need to improve in my teaching strategies so that students can have attention, memory, and understand the lessons that I will impart to them easily.

In my previous classes, I usually emphasize the middle part of my class which is according to the primary- recency effect, it is not efficient. It explains that the first and last part is the most important part of the discussions since this is the time that students can easily remember. It also helps me to change the mindset of purely verbal associations in presenting the lessons in the class. According to dual coding theory, we need to equally bought in visual representations and verbal associations. And lastly, as a teacher, I now understood that the load of the activities, assignments and information that I need to give to my students must just be enough for them to restore. Overload means they cannot grasp the whole lesson and could forget it at the end of the day.

These theories help me to improve. I am so excited to apply this learning in the class.