Agtrabaho Tayo Manenen

In the school where I am affiliated with, it’s the very start of making contact with students. If not, with their parents or guardians.

We prepare a message for them that contains an introduction of who we are, the reason why we are messaging them and the steps that they have to take in order to be successfully included in messenger group chat. We send the same message to everyone. Then we can just respond, accordingly, to the questions they will ask.

Messenger group chat is what we utilize to make announcements to students. We do have our canvas platform but we have to orient first the students how they are able to access their accounts.

The job should be just okay if not for some contact numbers that are unreachable or not updated, considering that they were informed to provide updated mobile numbers when they enrolled in the university.

Yesterday, upon the receipt of classlist, with contact details of our students, from our principal, I immediately texted the mobile numbers. I also emailed all available email addresses that were listed. Some students befriended me at once on facebook, messaged me with on messenger, and so I added them to our group chat.

This morning, since I have not received any response yet from the others, I called the numbers and…

“Your number cannot be completed and dialed, please check the number, and dial again.”

Or something like that. I am not sure if I heard smart right or not. I also hear…

“The number you have dialed is incorrect…”

Or…

“The number you have dialed is either unattended or out of coverage area…”

I immediately sent a message to the office asking them for additional contact numbers. The other remedy was asking their classmates if they happen to know those that are not reachable. Fortunately for the case of my students, they know the Facebook accounts of their classmates. Though there is really a high probability for them totally not knowing each other since this is transition from junior high school to senior high school where students are coming from different schools (public or private).

I am hoping that parents/guardians will make follow ups about the enrollment of their children/wards, like call the school so that updated information may be extracted from them, for those who were not able to provide updated information. We do not want those incidents again where parents only come at the end of the school year to inquire about their children or wards.