by Manolo Serapio Jr.

Grade school students, all wearing face masks and seated about a meter apart, lined an area shaded by trees in southern Maguindanao province. It’s Monday and two teachers take turns explaining learning modules that the children are expected to answer for the rest of the week.

The town of Paglat, which hasn’t had a single case of COVID-19 since the pandemic hit the world this year, is among a few places in the Philippines that are taking bold steps to help learners cope with school work through in-person tutorials.

As the pandemic closed schools and transferred learning to homes, many students are grappling with the modules on their own with their parents either working or unschooled and many families unable to afford phones, computer and Internet connection.

Holding in-person teaching sessions, which began in early November, was the idea of Paglat Mayor Abdulkarim Langkuno. He says he was prodded to act by Synergeia Foundation President Milwida Guevara following a virtual meeting with local chief executives of Mindanao just days before.

“She (Guevara) said to think of ways to help the students,” says Langkuno. “I met with all the stakeholders and this is the only solution I could think of to help the teachers, the students and the parents.”

Paglat is among 426 local governments that work with Synergeia, a non-profit organisation whose goal is for every Filipino child to complete basic education.

Even as the health crisis forced schools to shut to curb the spread of COVID-19, Synergeia has continued to engage with educators, parents, students and communities via online workshops and meetings to push for measures and reforms to make sure every child’s education continues unimpeded.

Inspired by Synergeia’s reform push, similar in-person tutorials are happening in other parts of Maguindanao including North Upi, and in Balindong, Lanao del Sur. Other places where similar sessions are being held are San Gabriel, La Union and the towns of Cabatuan and Concepcion in Iloilo province, all done with strict compliance to health protocols.

‘Under the trees’

Like in most of these places, students in Paglat are given tutorials at least once a week. Each session runs for about two hours and covers subject areas in the learning modules provided by the schools that students may be struggling with or need more explaining of.

In some communities, parents are required to bring chairs for their children to limit health risks. Even with no recorded case of COVID-19, residents are still mandated to wear masks and violators are fined.

“The sessions have to be done in well ventilated areas, not in rooms. So most of the time, it’s under the trees, an open-air gymnasium or any open spaces,” said Langkuno.

The local government hired more than 60 additional teacher volunteers – education degree holders who have yet to take licensure examination – to augment the current crop of 40-plus permanent teachers to cover all of its eight barangays.

The municipality, with a population of about 24,000, has nine elementary schools and three high schools.

The open-air learning sessions are a big help for parents in Paglat, where less than 10 percent of adults have finished college, says Langkuno.

‘Best legacy’

Education is close to Langkuno’s heart – it was key to rewriting his life story that in the 1970s was drawn to the armed struggle in Mindanao.

At 17, he was a commander of the Moro National Liberation Front, the Muslim separatist group that fought for an independent Islamic state for decades before reaching a peace deal with the government in 1996.

Convinced by a relative that education should be his priority, Langkuno soon after left his hometown to study civil engineering in Manila. That led to a career in government and later, a big job at the Ministry of Agriculture and Water in Saudi Arabia.

He returned to the Philippines after 15 years, became a lawmaker in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and was later elected mayor of Paglat, a municipality that was only created in 2001.

“Education is the best legacy,” he says.

Datuan Matu, the school district supervisor in the municipality, says the learning sessions in the purok, or small community areas, are also a more efficient use of teaching resources.

Instead of the teachers making individual house visits, they are able to reach a bigger group of students in a community in one go, giving them more time on the tutorials themselves, he said.

“We saw that the children were able to answer the modules, which means learning is taking place,” said Matu.

By Malio Aguilar

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One has a degree in accounting and the other in education, and both were looking for work until the pandemic hit. Now, Aleah Gampong and Emy Tarnate are among hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers helping children survive an education system altered by a global health crisis.

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Twenty-three-year old Gampong is part of a volunteer group in Balindong town in Lanao del Sur in Mindanao island in the south. A veteran of community service at a young age, she spends three days a week braving rains and rough terrains to mentor kids in remote areas.

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Tarnate, who’s a year younger and plans to be a mathematics teacher, tutors kids daily in reading and math for free in her hometown in San Gabriel in northern La Union province.

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Volunteers like them have become essential in many communities across the Philippines where children are struggling to understand learning modules on their own with their parents either working or unschooled themselves.

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They help fill a crucial gap in the education system created by a pandemic that has shuttered schools and shifted learning to homes and the burden of mentoring children to parents.

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In places where there are not enough teachers, where smartphones, computers and Internet connectivity in homes are rare, in-person tutorials from these volunteers have become nearly indispensable for learners.

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And to some extent, communities that are rethinking methods to limit any disruption in children’s education in the midst of the pandemic has also spurred volunteerism in many parts of the country, fostering a genuine desire to help students cope with the demands of remote learning.

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Training ground

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The volunteers are typically degree holders and undergraduates willing to teach children, either recruited by the barangays like in the case of San Gabriel or by educators leading fresh learning approaches as in the case of Balindong.

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Tarnate was part of a reading caravan during the summer who hiked mountains to reach the kids. When that ended, she continued tutoring elementary and high school students in a barangay hall near her place that’s now turned into an in-person tutorial hub, with safety measures in place.

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“I volunteered because I didn’t want these kids to waste their time learning nothing,” she says. Among other things, she helps them with proper pronunciation of English words, recalling a time in college when she got bullied for mispronouncing words, which she doesn’t want them to experience.

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“This is also a training ground for me and it will help me develop my teaching skills,” said Tarnate, who bikes with a fellow volunteer on Fridays to mentor kids in another village.

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Some families, thankful for their work, offer snacks and sometimes token fees, to the volunteers, she says, which are shared equally among them.

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In Balindong, Gampong is part of a group that launched tutoring sessions in mid-October called Siyap Ko Siringan – a Maranao term that means “caring for your neighbor.”

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Paypa Serad, a 36-year-old district school supervisor who started the program, says she got the idea from a seminar conducted by Synergeia Foundation in September where the organisation proposed small learning hubs run by volunteers. She then recruited her former high school students who are now college graduates, including Gampong, to join her.

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Synergeia is working to improve the quality of basic education for Filipino children, pushing for reforms in 426 local government partners to boost learning in communities. The foundation works with institutions like the United Nations Children’s Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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‘Maximise learning potential’

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Gampong says the group has since focused on five villages where the children, they realised, need more help. But getting to these places is never easy.

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“Roads are rough and when it rains they become so muddy so traveling takes a while,” she says. “We also walk far to some of the places because the kids are divided by grade levels and are not in one location.”

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In her volunteer work, she saw how tough it’s been for some students to keep up with the learning modules on their own. In one session, she said one student pleaded with her for daily tutorials, and became glum when told that the group needed to visit other kids elsewhere.

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Doing community service is something that Gampong is used to, having joined various relief drives.

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She recently took part in efforts to provide financial aid to tricycle drivers who suffered income loss due to the pandemic and previously participated in a feeding program in a provincial jail in Marawi City, the site of a five-month battle between the military and Islamic militants in 2017 that left the city in ruins.

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Back in San Gabriel, another volunteer, engineering student Michaella Pasian spent many hours with fellow volunteers during the summer to make supplementary learning modules for kids during  the annual reading caravan.

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She continues to help some learners in math and art, tutoring them in her spare time.

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“It would be a shame if the students do not maximise their learning potential,” says Pasian. “I know how it feels to be left behind in school and I do not want any student to feel the same way.”

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