Welcome Back To School My Aeta Learners!

 Yesterday, August 22, 2022, the School Year for 2022-2023 began.

I know a lot of us are excited about the opening of classes. Some parents are happy to see their child having their first day of school but a little nervous because of COVID 19. To ensure the safety of all the students in the school, we must follow health protocols to protect everyone from the said virus.

It’s been two years since the total lockdown affected many aspects of human lives, especially regarding education. To surpass and sustain the needs of the learners and for the continuity of learning, they proposed blended learning, which included online teaching and modular learning. This dramatically affects the system of the learners, from classroom setup to home-schooling which they need to be independent and, of course, with the help of their parents or guardians.

But still, some are against the opening of classes that 100% of students must attend face-to-face for the school year 2022-2023. This is because the threat of the virus is still there, and we cannot guarantee that everyone is safe and away from this virus.

There are also excited to have face-to-face for this school year despite the global pandemic threat. Especially for those who are struggling to study alone, those who have no gadgets like laptops and phones, and those who have no access to an internet connection. These are some struggles of all learners.

And, of course, we cannot deny the struggles of those learners who are in remote areas. I know that because I am a teacher of far-flung schools, and I also wrote my book about this, entitled “The Learning Struggles of The Indigenous Pupils in the New Normal,” which was completed and published during my Master’s Degree journey.

I witnessed all the hardships of my parents and pupils during that time; what makes it more complicated is that many of their parents were illiterate “no read, and No write.” Because they give more attention to their basic needs than their education needs, we understand their reasons for it. So home-schooling makes them suffer and lose interest in pursuing their children’s education.

But because we are teachers, we need to do something about it. We develop different strategies and techniques for them to cope with the continuity of education. We contextualized the learning modules so they could easily understand all the instructions written in the given modules. Despite the distances and the challenges to reaching their places, we conducted house-to-house or home visitations to address all their problems and questions regarding the learning modules.

So now, knowing that we will have face-to-face classes for this school year, most of the parents in our school are so happy and excited because they know their children will learn more with the help of teachers.

But now, we are happy to announce that our Aeta Learners are back in school!

I love to see their lovely faces and feel they missed having their teachers around to guide them in learning. I see the smile on their faces when they finally see their classmate’s faces again.

And to add some smiles to their faces, I bought some papers, notebooks, and bullpens for them to lessen their burdens in buying school supplies, of course with the help of this platform. I'm so grateful for my earnings for the past few months because I got the chance to buy school supplies for them.

Welcome back, our lovely students; we are ready to serve you!

Congratulations to all the students here and to all the moms out there who sent their children to school again! May you all enjoy school again! Just be safe always and stay healthy!

I was about to publish this article yesterday, but because I’m tired and so overwhelmed by welcoming our students for their energy, my energy drained so much.

By the way, the rain is falling so hard right now, that’s why the municipal mayor suspended the classes here in our place, so I got the chance to publish this article today.

Once again, Happy morning, everyone! Keep safe.