Schoolkid.Ph

Without textbooks or workbooks, how can these children learn the fundamentals of math? Read on how I came about having my heart set on getting these children tooled to learn math.

I’m aware of the problems of  public education in the country – the lack of classrooms and equipment, poorly maintained facilities, lack of or inadequate classroom materials, the underpaid teachers – all these boil down to the lack of government support for public education.  We hear news about it on and off that it’s so much in our faces, but unfortunately, no big solution still has been brought forward.

It was around September last year when I visited my childhood hometown in Pampanga and was brought to the elementary school in our baranggay.  Compared to the city public schools, Lakandula Elementary School is a small elementary school which has a population of only about 700 students, just a little over 100students per grade level.  A typical public school layout,  it had a covered assembly area in the middle of the compound and the classrooms surround it.

I was actually surprised and thought how lucky the school administrators were  to have a clean and pleasant school.  There were only one or two unusable classrooms with the roofing destroyed but other than that all the other classrooms seemed well-maintained.

Unfortunately, their luck ended there.  Without any further funding, the school could not provide a 1:1 textbook ratio to the students.  They had very few teaching materials (to which I give high praise to the teachers for their creativeness and resourcefulness in making their own teaching aids).  Worse, they could not even provide the test papers for the quarterly exams due to lack of funds!

When I asked the teachers what they do to get through the exams, they told me that if there are no funds they ask the parents to shell out for the cost of the mimeographing of the test papers.  Not all parents, of course, are able to contribute though. I also asked about the day-to-day learning of the students. Having to follow the DepEd guideline, each subject is taught for less than an hour each day.  But without any textbooks or workbooks, the teacher spends most of the subject period explaining the lesson or writing on the blackboard with the students copying. By the time an exercise is given, probaby 2-3 is completed before the subject period is up.  So, how can these students be expected to learn their lessons well enough? The school’s Grade 2 Math grade average (1st-3rd Qtr, SY2010-2011) is only 73.7. So, the answer to my earlier question is, they don’t.

Well, this revelation truly disturbed me and the days after that gave me restless nights thinking about it.  Here I am slaving to make home worksheets for my kids to practice on (this is on top of their textbooks and school worksheets) and there are these other kids who have none.  Okay, if my kids heard this they would joke and say “Lucky them!” but of course, they know what I’m really talking about here. QUALITY EDUCATION – which every child has the right to have.  I know that these children have poor grades not because they’re not intelligent. They have poor grades because they did not get the right tools to learn the lessons well.

That’s when my light-bulb moment came and had the idea of having these students try out my worksheets, even if just practice or review at home.  I’ve already got all the content on the Schoolkid.Ph website anyway, so all I needed were paper and ink for my CIS printer.

Enter my 18-yr old brother, Sol Jr. who also shares the family’s civic-mindedness. For the year, he made a personal mission (Project Sol) to help the school by providing some school supplies, drum for the school band, and eye-screening test.  When I told him that I was thinking of providing math worksheets to one grade level, he pledged to donate the paper. Yipee!!

Last February, I met with the Grade 2 teacher, Ms. Cecille Dizon, and she gave me a copy of the grade 2 math curriculum.  Since it was going to be a test project, I provided worksheets for 3rd quarter (SY2010-2011) as a review for the 3rd quarter exams.

Unfortunately, I was not able to go back for the fourth quarter of that schoolyear. I did, however, go back last summer, to ask the teachers if the worksheets have been effective.  The feedback was very positive and their willingness to continue with it was there.

So for this schoolyear 2010-2011, I prepared worksheets for the entire schoolyear, still for Grade 2 Math, which is about 50 worksheets per student. Again, my thanks to my brother, Sol, for donating the paper.  Still as a pilot project, the teachers will use them while the lesson is taught, as seatwork, and not as review for the exam anymore.

The school principal, Mrs. Salonga, along with the three Grade 2 teachers thanked us so much. The joy in their faces were priceless. Apparently, they were able to get textbooks in all subjects for their students this year (still not 1:1 though) except for the math. They say that these worksheets will go a long way. I do hope that the students enjoy the worksheets and get them motivated to learn their lessons well.

To me, early elementary math is one of the most important subjects because this is where the fundamentals of math are taught.  Children must master these lessons to make it easier for them to learn higher level math. It is also the math fundamentals that we use the most in daily living. This is why I chose to donate Grade 2 math. I am also preparing Grade 1 Math for them.

I’m officially including the worksheet donation to my Schoolkits For Schoolkids outreach project.  If proven to be effective, I’ll be seeking out other public schools to work with. At this point, I prefer working with small schools where student population is manageable, teachers are motivated and where student potential for improvement is high. In this case, Lakandula Elementary School is in the top 5 schools in their DepEd region.

I feel great about this.  Every time I think about this experience, I feel a flutter in my heart and a gush of happiness flows. I hope that by reading this post, I’ve imparted some of these feeling to you.

“Let’s all help our children do well in school.”

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