Not just teachers, they are awakeners

No one can teach if not in love with teaching, said M.E. Sangster. Love for the vocation distinguishes the four teachers honored as “Outstanding Filipinos, 2018” by Metrobank Foundation.

Though an urbanite, Mary Jane S. Ramo chooses to head school in a remote Subanon tribal village in Tudela, Misamis Occidental. She not only teaches English to modernize the youngsters, but also reawakens in them discarded ethnic customs. Helping them know who they are and where they’re going. From speaking only Misamis’ dominant Bisaya, the students learn to converse both in a world language and in their indigenous tongue. That enables them to think in three cultures; sort of like solving three Rubik’s Cubes at the same time – clearly an IQ booster.

Fridays are now Subanon Day, when students come to class in native garb. In campus is a makeshift museum of Subanon implements, weaves, and ornaments. On Ms Ramo’s invitation, tribal elders tutor the children in ethnic musical instruments, chants, and folklore.

Handling other basic subjects are 11 co-teachers. Ms Ramo encourages parents to share in improving the students’ academic performance through “Mama Ko, Papa Ko, Titser Ko.” Ms Ramo leads them in earth and cleanliness awareness via reuse, reduce, recycle.

Teaching for 24 years now, Ms Ramo is a Master of Arts in Education Management. She is a devoted wife and mother of two.

A Doctor of Education, Alma S. Janagap has been offered several times high positions at the Dept. of Education regional office in Panay. Instead she opts to remain as English instructor and remedial adviser to generations of struggling high schoolers at Pavia, Iloilo. No one is to be left behind. Aside from the regular English teaching load, Dr. Alma handles Remedial Reading for Grades 7 and 8. The English and Reading skills make the students catch up and excel in other subjects. At it for nearly three decades, Dr. Alma is called Iloilo’s Literacy Crusader.

Fellow-educators and civic leaders cite Dr. Alma’s feats. To her they credit the students’ habit of voracious reading in and off campus. In a small schoolroom she runs a Reading Clinic of books, charts, games, and interactive media, some of which she produced on her own. Results of the personalized tutoring are outstanding: 98 percent of remedial learners move on with ease to senior high school; zero dropout among 5,000 students every school year. The innovation is a benchmark in the Iloilo Division of Schools, replicated with Dr. Alma’s help by 240 reading coordinators in 149 campuses province-wide. Most notably, some of her remedial reading students have become tutors. “I want to guide and inspire, just like how my teachers affected my life,” she says.

Dr. Alma is married and a mother of four. Outside her schoolwork she promotes responsible parenthood and successful marriages through seminars at the local parish. About 300 starter couples and 4,000 families have been reached by the advocacy started in 2012.

Aimee Marie C. Gragasin’s yearly wards are topnotch – juniors at the elite Philippine Science High School in Cagayan Valley. She teaches them Physics, in which she holds a Doctorate. The challenge is to help them see themselves as world-class scientists. A clue lied in her upbringing by parents who were themselves Science teachers. Answer: early immersion in real-life scientific research and innovation.

Supported by the school administration, Dr. Aimee initiated eight years ago a summer internship program for the third year students. For two weeks they are posted to any of 20 science institutions in faraway Manila and elsewhere. She arranges their tasking at, among others, the Dept. of Science and Technology, National Research Council of the Philippines, and National Physics Institute at UP Diliman. Interns get to sharpen career paths, and establish networks of experts and potential colleagues. Dr. Aimee’s SIP is now a required activity in the school curriculum. The DOST provincial office acknowledges the SIP’s contribution to boosting in turn local science institutions.

Dr. Aimee has been teaching for 34 years. She earned her Bachelor of Secondary Education, major in Physics, cum laude, and Masters of Science in Teaching Physics at the Ateneo de Davao University. She received her doctorate in Educational Management, with dissertation distinction, at Saint Mary’s University, Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya. She is married to a Math teacher and has a son interested in the arts.

Carla B. Dimalanta’s field sounds so esoteric, as the country’s only female Exploration Geophysicist with a doctoral degree. Yet her impact is most felt by common folk. Among her key studies were groundwater sources for coastal communities in Romblon, 2009; landslide hazards in Mindoro, 2017; and, recently, gold mineralization in Masara District, Eastern Mindanao. In 2013, as the National Historical Commission restored old churches toppled by the Bohol earthquake, she joined the ground penetrating radar surveys. For the Law of the Sea, she took part in gathering geophysical data to delineate Philippine maritime boundaries and resources.

For those, geology majors at the University of the Philippines look up to their Prof. Carla. Generously she lends them her time and talent as a highly cited geoscientist. Her basic teaching topics relate to climate change and disaster risk management for an archipelago at the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Prof. Carla takes pride in her students’ achievements. She has mentored and advised 15 students toward the completion of Masters degrees in Geology, some of whom specialized in Geophysics. Five of her students presently are pursuing doctoral studies in overseas universities.

Prof. Carla juggles her teaching and research time with administering UP academic affairs. She has turned down offers to work and live permanently in America because of a personal vow to render service to the country by training new scientists.

Metrobank Foundation’s “Outstanding Filipinos, 2018” includes three soldiers and three policemen: Lt. Cols. Francis A. Señoron, Army; Danilo T. Facundo, Marines; and Thomas Ryan R. Seguin, Air Force; Sr. Supt. Pascual G. Muñoz, PhD; Sr. Insp. Dennis S. Ebsolo, PhD; and Sr. Police Officer-1 Aida L. Awitin.

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