FMA Schools Commit to Rise Up

FMA Schools Commit to Rise Up Despite the Pandemic

On September 14, 2020, Philstar.com reported that 865 out of 14,435 private educational institutions suspended operations this school year 2020-2021 as our country is reeling with the Covid-19 pandemic. A major factor: low enrollment turnout. But for our four FMA basic education schools, we have committed to continue to offer quality Salesian education, despite the downturn.

The government-imposed lockdown of Luzon and most cities in the Philippines, effective March 14, 2020, caught everybody by surprise. But the move was essential to fight the unprecedented health crisis. Like most schools, our FMA basic education schools were finishing the last two weeks of the 4th quarter, except for Mary Help of Christians College (Canlubang, Laguna) that had just completed the students’ final exams.

As law-abiding citizens, we dutifully followed all protocols and requirements set forth by government agencies responsible for our health and safety. But the situation called for courage, creativity, and much faith as we ventured on new paths to cope with the sudden “darkness” and, at the same time, to “let our light shine” for the educating community. Connection, communication, strategic planning, and a whole lot of courage pushed our administrators, faculty, staff, support personnel, and parents to face the future with hope. It seems that our school principals and faculty, accustomed to the grueling tasks of planning, articulation, and documentation, have quickly completed the prerequisites of the Department of Education to operate for SY 2020-2021. Each school articulated its Learning Continuity Plan (LCP), redesigned its curriculum, structures, goals, and budget according to new learning modalities available: online distance learning and homeschooling, to name a few.

Finance and Work Arrangements

Financial constraints have taken their toll on most families due to the pandemic, which is why enrollment in private schools has dramatically declined for SY 2020-2021. DepEd reports only 2 million students enrolled in private schools as of September 13, 2020, a stark decline from 4.3 million enrollees last school year.

Only with faith, courage, and deep trust in Divine Providence did our FMA schools commit to continue operations despite the decrease in enrollees. With lesser revenue for salaries of teachers, support personnel, and downsized operation costs, our schools had to resort to retrenchment or employment modification strategies e.g. personnel took turns working in biweekly or monthly shifts.

Flexible work arrangements, onsite or off-site, were set up to revitalize and maintain school operations even if community restrictions on mobility and accessibility unpredictably varied.

Learning Modalities and Online Services

Since children are confined to their homes, Online Distance Learning and Modular Distance Learning were the chosen learning modalities of our four basic education schools. When the lockdown was announced, the Principals and Coordinators began planning for the training and preparation of teachers for the new normal in education.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) were employed to anchor the online learning delivery: Phoenix Aralinks NGS (Next Generation School) for Don Bosco School, Manila; Phoenix Aralinks Hub for Mary Help of Christians College, Laguna; Nephila Web Moodle for Mary Help of Christians School, Cebu; and Diwa Genyo for Mary Help of Christians School, Pampanga. The teachers learned to use a combination of online platforms, apps & tools e.g., Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom, Google Suite, FlipGrid, to facilitate and enrich the online teaching and learning experience.

Each school also subscribed to cloudbased School Information Systems (SIS) to accommodate off-campus essential registration and accounting transactions. The schools created their websites and enhanced official social media accounts to ensure accessibility and provide communication channels for parents, students, teachers, and the rest of the educating community. These unprecedented moves were geared towards the common vision of continuity of teaching and learning despite the pandemic.

Virtual Campuses and Online Salesian Education

To effectively deliver Salesian education online, we continued the essential practices of the daily morning prayer and good day talk during the morning assembly. The weekly Lectio Divina per class, guidance services, campus ministry services, and the oratory outreach activities are creatively done online. The Salesian Youth Groups (SYG) seemed to explode with the same energy and youthful music, drama, dance, and intense prayer experiences as it used to during the pre-pandemic years. Traditional prayers and religious activities like the Family Living Rosary have also gone virtual, still, with palpable fervor of educators, students, and families wanting to keep united in faith and love. Innovations like the live-streamed school

Masses, the daily online Rosary of Don Bosco School – Manila, and virtual Family Rosary are very much appreciated.

Careful planning and research of best practices enabled each school to design class schedules to ensure that students & families maintain a healthy lifestyle. The multiple and periodic online conferences with parents and teachers helped the educating community to gradually transition into the new ways by which students will be attending their classes and learning their lessons. Administrators, teachers, parents, students -- everybody had to overcome their initial fears of the unknown territory of schooling via the World Wide Web, which had suddenly become the education lifeline of most parts of the Philippines and many countries in the world.

The challenges came on all fronts -- technical knowledge, availability of equipment, internet connectivity, internet and computer literacy, reduced curriculum, virtual teaching strategies, and internet safety were among the urgent and important concerns. Suddenly, our administrators, faculty, and staff members learned to be video producers, content creators and editors, graphic artists, and web designers on top of the usual demands of the curriculum, instructional leadership, and school administration. All of these were paralleled by the ongoing massive Covid-19 relief operations of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians!

We took it one step at a time. We continue the journey with much hope for the Lord to accompany us and guides us in our decisions and sustained efforts. We hope to continue to see and feel God’s provision and be instruments of His blessings for others, especially the youth and families entrusted to our care. For more exciting information about how our FMA basic education institutions have reinvented our schools for SY 2020-2021, check out their official FB pages and web pages:

Websites:

https://www.maryhelpcanlubang.com/ https://dbsmanila.online/ https://mhcscebu.edu.ph/ https://mhcspampanga.org/

Official Facebook Pages:

https://www.facebook.com/mhcccanlubang https://www.facebook.com/donboscoschoolmanila/ https://www.facebook.com/MaryHelpofChristiansSchoolCEBU/ https://www.facebook.com/MHCSPampangaInc

By Sr. Ernielyn Deypalan, FMA