Teachers in Navotas, Valenzuela get creative in pandemic

MANILA, Philippines — Ahead of the opening of classes and faced with limitations of resources due to the pandemic, Filipino teachers have resorted to creative ways to teach Philippine language and literature through distance learning.

As the country commemorates the Buwan ng Wika this August, Filipino teachers in Navotas and Valenzuela shared with The STAR their gimmicks in teaching Filipino, such as showing an animated video of the teacher introducing himself and the course, as well as one performing a skit to demonstrate the concepts of writing.

As a teacher of Grade 9 students in Navotas, Cristopher Sobremesana of Tangos National High School has used the live video production tool StreamYard to conduct online classes on a Facebook group with his students.

He also edited an animation segment of himself introducing his name, the course, as well as his email address and contact number so that students may know where to contact him for questions.

“During our simulation, I was able to check the grammar of the students by encircling the mistake and sending the correct answers to the student through Facebook Messenger. We are just catching up with the technology-savvyness of the youth,” said the 29-year-old teacher.

In cases of students having no access to the internet or to any gadgets, he would make the time to send a text or call the student so that he could teach the child personally and answer his or her questions about the learning modules, Sobremesana said.

It would be the teacher who will adjust to be able to guide a student whether through internet or phone call, he added.

“If a child would study the module for the first time, he or she will be confused because we also find it difficult to understand Filipino even if it is our own language,” he said.

Ian Jay Formacion of Paso de Blas National High School in Valenzuela compared the job of a teacher during a pandemic to a call center – always on call and ready to assist a curious student.

A teacher broadcaster in Valenzuela Live educational program and a dancer, Formacion said his performance skills proved handy to teach senior high school students how to use the Filipino language in their chosen fields.

He also plans to encourage students to translate their regional languages that they learn from home into Filipino as part of the commemoration of the national languages month. One of his planned activities is to have students translate Tagalog infomercials about the pandemic to their mother tongue.

“It is important that the child does not forget the mother tongue that he or she first learned,” Formacion said.

Formacion said he also plans to teach students how to express their anxieties and fears brought about by the pandemic in the Filipino language.

Asked what motivates them to go the extra length just to be able to reach out to students, the two Filipino teachers said not even the pandemic could stop them from fulfilling their sworn duties.

“It is always said that a teacher never stops learning, that it is continuous. When during the face to face classes, I was able to impart something, why not now during online classes? If I have a skill, why not share it?” Sobremesana said in thenative tongue.