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.