MENTORING THE MENTORS

During the semestral break, I went to Tacloban City (last Oct. 27) for a very special purpose. I was invited by my very close friend, S. Raphael, to talk with the high school teachers of the Religious Sisters of Mercy (RSM), the congregation where she belongs. It was actually a three-day seminar-workshop on curriculum re-engineering, creative strategies and performance assessment. It was a hands-on exercise aimed at updating the curricula with intensive values integration and provision on how to implement and evaluate learning based on such curricula.

Basically, our main objective was to engineer a student-centered, contextualized curriculum that strikes a balance between content and values integration and that caters to the needs of students in a technology-driven environment. Our specific objectives were the following:

1. To acquaint teachers on varied ways of integrating values across the curricula
2. To know how to prepare lessons incorporating values that address social concerns
3. To familiarize various computer applications enhancing student learning experience
4. To formulate authentic student assessments/evaluations and scoring rubrics

Besides regular classroom teachers, academic heads and the different subject area coordinators were also invited to join because I felt they may also benefit from the output of the seminar. Christian Living teachers were also invited to help them in the preparation of their syllabi; however, the lesson plan proposed in the seminar did not follow the hermeneutical cycle.

There were various activities done during the in-service training. There were a number of meaning-making engagements on the school Vision-Mission statements, core values and related values and curriculum engineering. Based on the syllabus format I proposed, we went into lesson planning. My talk on creative teaching strategies focused mainly on the application of computer in teaching such as the PPT presentation, blogging and e-sites. I ended my three-day workshop with a head-breaking (according to the participants) workshop on authentic assessment, rubrics making and portfolio preparation.

I enjoyed so much my encounter with the teachers. Although most of them had difficulty at first, as the seminar went on they were able to accommodate; thus, they understood more and promised me to apply in their school and respective classes the pedagogical insights they have learned. I believed that they would in the since that S. Raphael purposely brought me there for them to accomplish something next year-some sort of teacher blackmail(?).