PARTICIPATING THE FIRST NATIONAL SUMMER LEARNING CAMP IN THE PHILIPPINES: History in the making!

"Para sa Bata, Para sa Bayan!" (For the Child, For the Country)
- Department of Education, Philippines

Hello...Hello... How are YOU?

Firstly, my warmest HELLO TO ALL THE AMAZING PEOPLE OF THE HIVE AND MY GRAND SALUTE to ALL THE TEACHERS of the world! As a teacher myself, I know we are not perfect but for sure we are making a big difference in the lives of our children. Same goes to all the parents who have been very supportive in their children's academic endeavors.

We, teachers, often take that extra mile to make sure our learners can and will always gain lifelong learning. In this post, I will be sharing with you the extra mile our Department of Education has taken to ensure that quality education is served to every Filipino child. Anchored from the department's mantra "Para sa Bata, Para sa Bayan", our country has launched the National Learning Camp (NLC) 2023.

This National Learning Camp has been first in the Philippines although we have had remedial classes done before. This aims to address learning gaps that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic and consolidate prior learning and enhance learning capabilities that are focused on the 7th and 8th Grade's three major subjects: English, Science, and Mathematics. With this goal, our school has positively accepted and participated in the program despite the challenges it may cause us.

Activating Participant's Microsoft Account

The National Learning Camp is only open for Grades 7 and 8 students for this year so the class advisers of this grade levels were responsible for activating the students Microsoft account created by the school where the students were in their elementary level. The students will be needing their Microsoft accounts to take the Online NLC Pre-Test. Good thing was, we had two ICT teachers who helped us a lot. Collecting student's Accounts was a bit challenging for us because we have students who came from other elementary schools. It took us days to retrieve and activate two hundred and forty- eight (248 students) participants.

ONLINE NLC PRE-TEST DAY 1

The first of the online test was a little heavy and tiring. Why? Because we forgot to install the Safe Data Browser App intended for our region which is provided from our division. It took us a while to let the students start taking the pre-test.

It took us almost two hours to settle the first batch of takers. Some of the students were not familiar in manipulating the computer so attending to them was time- consuming. We had to manually guide them specifically on logging in to their accounts. After a while, we opted to give instructions over the microphone because we found it difficult to went to them individually.

Most of the concerns we encountered were wrong email addresses and passwords. I had to bring with me the list of their emails and passwords because they copied them mistakenly which was the main reason why they couldn't log in.

There were eight teachers scattered in the testing area to give assistance to students with technical problems encountered. It was the first time for some students to take tests online, so we gave them a lot of patience and understanding. We allowed them to take their time and not minding on the time limit because we did not implement it strictly.

THE WAITING AREA...

Students were eagerly and excitedly waiting for their turn. On the first day, we were able to finish 5 batches of takers out of nine batches.

ONLINE NLC PRE-TEST DAY 2

The second day of the online test started early. We catered the remaining four batches of students. And it all went well and smooth. We finished the online pretest before lunch break so we ended the day for us to do the aftercare of the ICT room😅.

REALIZATION...

Why the need for NLC?

From a teacher's perspective ( and I hope every one would agree), LEARNING is generally and always a need. Learning is survival as well. When pandemic struck the world, the Philippines is one of the affected countries and it made a negative domino effect on almost all sectors of the nation including education. Eventually, we are learning to adapt the sudden change because of almost two years lockdown and all. However, adaptation is no way easy at all. Challenges arise from both ends.

In education, it is no denial that academic learning of the students during lockdown years, wherein the department shifted into digital and printed modular learning, was heartbreaking. The truth hurts but the reality is that learning gaps exist and now becomes a heavy challenge as we slowly moved back to what we termed now as the new normal of education.

From there I realized that this National Learning Camp is just a slice of the cake yet a huge slice to start a celebration😅! This learning camp is already a brilliant move in order to lessen if not totally address learning gaps among students who badly need it.

This is also the reason why I volunteered to teach! Although we had the option not to and rather enjoy the summer vacation, a lot of teachers in our school volunteer to participate because we believe in this initiative, we believe that the students need more intervention or enhancement, and we hope that this is a positive example to all that we had a lot to offer to help our learners! Para sa Bata, Para sa Bayan!

That's all for now my friends! I hope you have learned something in this blog. See you then on my next post. God bless and Big Hugs!🥰😘