Dynamic Learning Program helps students

cope with Sendong trauma

By
CONG CORRALES
-
JANUARY 29, 2012

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CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews/28 January) – A revolutionary innovation in teaching,
applied in public high schools here has given its students an edge over those using the traditional,
classroom-type, learning system in their learning recovery since tropical storm Sendong claimed
a thousand lives and affected hundreds of thousands more last month.

One such school, Angeles Sisters National High School (ASNHS) in Barangay Consolacion —
one of the worst hit among 25 barangays affected — was knee-deep in mud after the flashfloods
last month so that when classes resumed on January 3, they only had a 44% attendance, Gil
Araneta, ASNHS principal, said. But in a span of two weeks, attendance had reached 90 per
cent.

Araneta said they gave their students a series of Psycho-Social sessions when they started the
classes for a week. He said the Dynamic Learning Program (DLP), a teaching method that takes
into consideration the latest result from the fields of neuroscience, has enabled the program’s
students to cope with their traumatic experience during the flood and at the same time revive
their fervor for learning.

“The program is innovative in that it lets the students learn by discovering through activities,” he
said. He added that since they applied DLP in their school, performance indicators of their
students showed stark improvements.

He said their first year and fourth year levels championed the city district’s Math Challenge early
last year. They also bagged second place in a Rotary International-sponsored Quiz bee, last year.
“DLP teaches the students the virtue of discipline. The program is designed to maximize
students’ motivation, focus, confidence and composure, self-discipline and stamina in learning,”
the principal said.

ASNHS currently has a graduating class of 133 students. Because the program has lessened the
need for classrooms and textbooks, their students were able to recover faster, Araneta said.

Academic innovation

Under the new teaching method, students are given activity sheets instead of textbooks. A
session begins with the students working on activities on their own, while the teacher comes in to
discuss the concept for 15 to 20 minutes to reinforce the day’s lesson.

“With this, the teacher will just facilitate the learning and because they only facilitate. We can
now handle three classes at the same time on any given concept, for example Math. The program
has resolved the problem of lack of teachers since a single teacher can now handle more
sections,” Araneta said.

DLP is 70 to 80 percent student activities and only 20 to 30 percent lecture. It is designed to

solve existing problems plaguing the academe like the dearth of qualified teachers, few or error-
filled textbooks and the large number of students per classes in public schools.

The activity sheets form part of a student’s portfolio which will be the basis for grading a
student’s performance. Students cannot take their activity sheets home “so that the students can
really rest and relax when they get home,” Araneta explained.

Megoldis Gantalao, 16, a senior student at ASNHS Sisters National High School in barangay
Consolacion said they used to live in a rented apartment in Abellanosa Stree, near the Maharlika
Bridge. Now, they are renting another apartment in Barangay Gusa after Sendong flooded their
apartment building.
“The program has encouraged us to develop our initiative for learning concepts. My
comprehension improved,” said Gantalao, who was one of the finalists in Quiz bee on Consumer
Rights sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industries in September last year.

For Apple Jean Dandasan, a junior student at the same school, however, Sendong was a
traumatic experience since it totally washed out their home of 25 years in District IV,
Consolacion. The Dandasans now live in a tent at the barangay’s covered court.

“Mas challenging ang DLP because we learn our lessons individually. It has sharpened my
analytical skills,” she said.

Myrna Motoomull, Division Superintendent of the Department of Education (DepEd) said DLP
has been applied to all 35 public High Schools (except Regional Science High School) in the city
starting the school year 2011-2012 and “will continue for five years so that the maximum results
of the program can be seen.”

She welcomed the application of DLP in 34 High Schools in the city division’s two High School
Districts since its Secondary level’s performance indicators are far below the Education for All
(EFA) Goals set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

In school-year 2010-11, the city’s secondary level Drop-Out Rate was 7.17 per cent. This means
that for every 10 high school student, at least seven dropped-out. Its National Achievement
Test average, in school-year 2009-10 was 45.24 per cent. She said they have introduced “a
number of innovations and interventions done by individual schools to address the situation, and
yet the increase has been minimal.”

With the advent of the internet in the 1990s, physicist-researcher-educator couple, Dr.
Christopher Bernido and Dr. Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido, decided to leave the University of
the Philippines’ National Institute of Physics in Diliman, Quezon City and moved back to their
hometown—municipality of Jagna, Bohol.
There, the couple managed the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) where the Dynamic
Learning Program was born. they wanted to develop a teaching process that could both revive
the new generation of students’ attitude towards learning and the lack of qualified teachers in the
disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Motoomull said Smart Communications, Inc. in partnership with the Philippine Business for
Social Progress, sponsored an on-site program application observation trip for 36 public school
principals of Cagayan de Oro to CVIF in Bohol, where DLP started, and met the Bernidos.

The CVIF is home to the Research Center for Theoretical Physics and has been hosting physics
workshops every three years, usually featuring experts from all over the world. Their High
School Department pioneered the DLP through the couple’s innovative “Learning Physics as
One Nation” (LPON).

After eight years, the program’s graduates now have a 10% passing rate in the UP College
Admissions Test (UPCAT), one of the toughest collegiate entrance exams in the country. The
Bernidos garnered the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2010 for “their purposeful commitment to
both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost, and effective basic education even under
Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty.”

Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award has long been regarded as Asia’s equivalent
of the Nobel Prize. Recently, the couple received the UP and Meralco’s Gawad Haydee Yorac.
Whenever asked about the DLP, the Bernidos always readily reply: “We focus on the mind, the
spirit and the heart of each child, and there we see untapped capabilities and incredible
resiliency.” (Cong Corrales/MindaNews)