Mentoring the Mentors Program

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

My article “Fomenting a Revolution in the Classroom” (Sunday Inquirer Magazine, June 12, 2011), which was on the Mentoring the Mentors Program (MMP) generated concrete and surprising responses.

MMP executive director Chinit D. Rufino got a lot of phone calls and e-mails. Good thing I included MMP’s contact numbers in the article, because if I didn’t I would not hear the end of it and I’d have had to keep forwarding messages to MMP. There were those who wanted to send donations so that more school administrators and teachers could experience the program, some wanted to volunteer their services (they have to go through training first), others wanted seminars for their schools – “ASAP, please.”

So here I am writing again about the program in this space so that more people would know about it and get interested. This is a much shorter version without photos. For the full version, read the magazine online at www.inquirer.net.

MMP is taking the countryside by storm, but quietly. By storm, because it has unleashed so much energy and fire from both the catalysts and the catalyzed, the mentors and the mentees. Quietly, because those involved do their work without fanfare.

But the time comes when the light should no longer remain hidden under a bushel. To use another biblical imperative, they should get out there and shout from the rooftops.

MMP had low-key beginnings. It had a most unlikely main instigator in the person of journalist-publisher Eugenia “Eggie” D. Apostol, founding chairperson of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (1985) and the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP). Apostol has a string of national and international awards for her daring in the field of journalism, especially during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship. She was not a school teacher. But something so possessed her to go beyond journalism and get her feet wet in education. FWWPP embarked on a movement called Education Revolution which included an adopt-a-school and mentoring the mentors programs.

Adopt-a-school was an idea whose time had come and was promptly adopted by civil society, business and the government. But MMP also took on a life of its own and gave its initiators great surprises in the way principals and teachers took to it like ducks to water. There was so much thirst to be quenched and a watershed moment had come.

MMP is a program meant to further develop teachers’ skills in mentoring their students, open their hearts and broaden their perspectives. Its main targets are the public school system and teacher education institutes (TEI). It mentors teachers on the “new” teaching methodologies so that both teachers and students become not only learned individuals but also agents of change.

Education for social transformation is the ultimate goal of mentoring, so at the center of MMP’s work is to help people learn more effectively and “helping people to become the person they want to be.”

MMP is a mobile program designed to meet the participants in their own localities. Sessions are limited to 50 to 65 persons to ensure quality and personalized mentoring.

The topics in the mentoring program: Kambio sa pananaw from akin to atin (paradigm shift); principles and practices in mentoring; character formation; leadership for service; building win-win relationships and the art of loving; active teaching-learning strategies and designing effective instruction/understanding by design.

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Journalism as if Earth mattered

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
 

I can’t resist this one, so let me say something about the matter before I proceed to the intended subject of today’s column.

When another round of fishkill occurred in Taal Lake a few days ago, was it a fisheries official who said that it was not a fishkill but “fish mortality”? A grouchy copy editor would have red-penciled it were it not a direct quote, an example of jargon, euphemism, even obfuscation, that could be a story in itself.

In a how-to-write monograph that I often use when speaking about writing, veteran editor Edward T. Thomson, presents basic guidelines. One of them is “avoid jargon.” He advises: “Don’t use words, expressions, phrases known only to people with specific knowledge or interests. Example: a scientist, using scientific jargon, wrote, ‘The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.’ He could have written: ‘All the fish died.’”

Another advice: Choose short words instead of long ones. “Kill” is four letters while “mortality” is…

In his “How to write with style,” best-selling novelist Kurt Vonnegut points out that the longest word in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be?” (by Shakespeare) is three letters. Imagine Hamlet saying instead: “Should I act upon the urgings that I feel, or remain passive and thus cease to exist?”

Vonnegut adds: “James Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.”

And so, with hearts breaking, let us say, “All the fish died.”

“Fish mortality” isn’t exactly scientific jargon, but I can’t see how different it is from a fishkill, unless it is explained why. I think the explanation given was that the recent fishkill was not so bad when compared with the previous one.

It’s still a fishkill if you ask me, (“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare said) and this recent one, any way you call it, stank just as bad. Blame overstocking in fish cages, overfeeding to hasten growth and greed for profit. It’s hitting not only Taal Lake, (home of the indigenous tawilis and to-die-for maliputo), but also Pangasinan and, recently, La Union.

Now, to get back to what I was writing before I got interrupted by “fish mortality.”

How can journalists cover stories on environment and development, on poverty and injustice, with professionalism, depth and authority? How can they relay the stories in a most effective, convincing, life-changing way? How deeply and passionately involved should they be in the events and issues they cover? Should they remain mere recorders and blow-by-blow storytellers?

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                                   (First stanza of Rizal's "Mi ultimo adios" written before his execution on Dec. 30, 1896.)

Today, June 19,  is the 150th birth anniversary of our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal. May his life and death continue to inspire our generation and generations to come. He is truly "The First Filipino".

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Yamot Aetas and Mt. PInatubo 20 years ago

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

“BINULSA KO na lang ang aking kalungkutan (I put my sorrow in my pocket).” —Paylot, an Aeta leader.

Here are excerpts from the feature article I wrote shortly after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption that went on for days in June 1991. I had gone to Zambales when the volcano was still spewing ashes and tracked down the Aetas and the Franciscan nuns whose idyllic community in Yamot on the volcano’s slopes was buried in ash and was no more. Nine years earlier in 1982, I spent time there and wrote a magazine article on the experience.

It was the Aetas of Yamot and the nuns who first alerted Phivolcs about the volcanic rumblings. I remember Sr. Emma Fondevilla, FMM, a scientist who lived among the Aetas, rushing to my house to show me the information. It was the Inquirer that first came out with her story. At first the Aetas were not taken seriously because the volcano was believed to be dormant. (Sr. Emma is now the provincial superior of the FMM in the Philippines.)

Then Mt. Pinatubo sprang to life in 1991 and gave the world an astounding pyroclastic show that darkened portions of planet Earth and caused some climate change. The Aetas of Yamot would later publish a coffeetable book “Eruption and Exodus” for which I wrote the foreword.

Today I remember with fondness the late Sr. Carmen “Menggay” Balazo, FMM who spent many years of her life organizing the Aetas so that they would become self-reliant communities. After many years and the Aetas had come into their own through Lakas (Lubos na Alyansa ng mga Katutubong Ayta ng Sambales), the Franciscan nuns moved on, confident that the Aetas would continue what they had begun.

The complete article “Somewhere, a Buried Village will Rise Again,” came out in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine on July 7, 1991.

                                                                 * * *

They weep not, for the village is not dead and buried. It lives in the villagers. Wherever the people go, the village will be transplanted. This is what this group of Aetas believes, this is what they hope to happen. Yamot, their home, is gone, buried in ash by a thundering volcano, but it will rise again somewhere.

On the day of the deadliest eruption, these Aetas were camped on a hilly place called Tomangan when suddenly the heavens heaved and darkened and then rained grayish mud and solid particles. The signal flags were raised and the bullhorns were sounded. It was an awesome sight. A stream of humanity shrouded in grey descending and fleeing for their lives. Somewhere a bus was waiting for them. Theirs was perhaps the most organized evacuation plan carried out during the dark hours. This group of Aetas was different.

Earlier, when Pinatubo became restless, the Aetas held study sessions on volcanoes. The people were shown pictures and video footage on how volcanoes behaved. The nuns invited resource persons from Phivolcs. Until that time the Aetas did not know much about eruptions. There were no oral accounts passed on by their ancestors. If there were, they must have been lost during those 600 years that the volcano was silent…

I tracked them down in Sta. Cruz town which was the sixth evacuation center the Aetas of Yamot stayed in. That time they were getting ready to move to Candelaria which they hoped would be the last…

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Fomenting a revolution in the classroom

Sunday Inquirer Magazine/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

A text message from a teacher in Palawan who attended a three-day Mentoring the Mentors seminar/workshop reads, “Hi, Dr. Sol, Dr. Eve & Dr. Cel! Ds s Rhoda, one of the pax in MMP at PSU. Just wanna thank u all again for what we got out of d seminar. For one, a mentor lyk me whos considering quitting her job made a (180) degree turn around in a matter of 3 days…”

The program is taking the countryside by storm but in a quiet way. By storm –because Mentoring the Mentors has unleashed so much energy and fire from both catalysts and the catalyzed, the mentors and the mentees. The sessions are usually quiet, because those involved are observing in rapt attention what is taking place and are not inclined to make useless chatter. They have more important things to do.

But the time comes when the light should no longer remain hidden under a bushel and should instead be brought forth. To use another biblical imperative, they should get out there and shout from the rooftops.

The Mentoring the Mentors Program (MMP) had low-key beginnings. It had a most unlikely instigator in the person of journalist-publisher Eugenia “Eggie” D. Apostol, founding chair of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (1985) and the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP). Apostol received the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature, Journalism and Creative Communication Arts plus several national and international awards for her work and daring in the field of journalism, especially during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship.

Eggie was not a school teacher. But something possessed her to go beyond journalism and get her feet wet in education. And so FWWPP embarked on a movement called Education Revolution, which included the adopt-a-school and mentoring the mentors programs. A series of meetings, consultations and brainstorming sessions created interest and enthusiasm among individuals and groups.

Adopt-a-school was an idea whose time had come, and was promptly adopted by civil society, business and the government. But the Mentoring the Mentors Program also took on a life of its own and gave its initiators great, pleasant surprises in the way principals and teachers took to it like ducks to water. There was so much thirst to be quenched and a watershed moment had come.

What is MMP?

It is a program meant to further develop teachers’ skills in mentoring their students, open their hearts and broaden their perspectives. Its main targets are the public school system (teachers and principals) and teacher education institutes (TEI). It coaches mentors (teachers) on the “new” teaching methodologies so that both teachers and students become not only learned and capable individuals but agents of change.

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Maliputo, tawilis and poisoned waters

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

In this season of huge fishkills in Taal Lake in Batangas, and Bolinao and Anda in Pangasinan, we again confront the grim reality of food gone to waste and environmental devastation caused by human greed.

Bolinao was that brave little town that stood up to big foreign investors that planned to put up a cement plant and mine its limestone deposits in the mid-1990s. The project would have ruined a rich marine habitat and changed the town’s way of life. I went there and saw for myself why the people of Bolinao were jealously protecting the land and the sea. I wrote a three-part series on the raging issue. Cape Bolinao is a special place like no other, the reason why the UP Marine Research Institute is there.

Years later, beach resorts and fish pens would proliferate with little regulation, making the Bolinao landscape unsightly. The fishkills in the recent years proved that fish cage owners have continued to push the limits, breeding too much in too little space, dumping too much feed to hasten growth. All for profit. In the end, the greedy have everything to lose. But to the bottom they take with them the rest of the fishing industry, even the small fishers who subsist on their daily catch of fish that thrive happily in the open sea. Who wants to buy and eat fish—the cultured bangus especially—nowadays?

For a couple of decades now my diet has consisted mainly of fish and veggies. I take some meat and chicken only when I eat out, which is not often, or when there is not much to choose from on the buffet table. I was born in a historic coastal town in Iloilo where fresh fish was aplenty, and fish preserved in ice or ilado (from the Spanish word hielo or ice) was considered second class. I have tasted the best and the freshest the sea has to offer.

Massive fishkills are upon us now. Images of tons of bangus floating belly up and rotting away, coastal residents wearing masks and truckloads of dead fish being buried should haunt those who have caused this and give them nightmares. The Inquirer’s editorial two days ago, (“Cosmic justice,” 6/7/2011) said it fiercely. It was about insatiable greed, neglect, abuse and—at last—nature striking back in a most nauseating way.

Deserving immediate attention are the indigenous species in our rivers and lakes, the areas of the fishkill. These species could go extinct because of foreign species that take over their habitat. They are also threatened by the fishkill. Take the case of the tabios or sinarapan (the world’s smallest edible fish) of Lake Buhi in Camarines Sur, and the tawilis and maliputo of Taal Lake. They could go the way of the pre-historic acanthodians and placoderms if nothing is done to preserve them.

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Amnesty International at 50

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

ITS FAMILIAR logo shows a burning candle with a piece of barbed wire wound around it. This was a familiar image of hope during the terrifying days of martial rule (1972-1986) in the Philippines. It was a candle that braved the tempest and shone in the night. Today, it continues to be a source of strength and hope for many oppressed peoples all over the world.

Amnesty International (AI) turned 50 last May 28.

“Since the Amnesty International candle first shone a light on the world’s hellholes, there has been a human rights revolution,” said Salil Shetty, AI’s secretary general. “The call for freedom, justice and dignity has moved from the margins and is now a truly global demand.”

Yes, the world has changed dramatically in so many ways since AI’s founding, but not necessarily for the better. Nations have risen against nations, geographical boundaries have changed. Evil despots rose and fell. Many oppressed peoples and individuals fought, triumphed and broke free.

But the struggle for freedom continues in new landscapes and circumstances. Today, all over the world, many nations and peoples continue to live in terror and unfreedom. New tyrants have emerged, causing destruction and death, bringing untold pain to countless human beings. But there is a candle that continues to shine.

AI is marking its 50th anniversary with the launch of a Global Call to Action “designed to help tip the scales against repression and injustice” with events held in more than 60 countries in every region in the world. The anniversary, AI said, comes against the backdrop of a changing human rights landscape, as people across the Middle East and North Africa courageously confront oppression, tyranny and corruption—often in the face of bloodshed and state violence.

AI’s global call to action for human rights includes a digital “Earth Candle” online that would allow netizens and activists to have an overview of AI’s work worldwide and become a force for change. The catch phrase “Be one more, ask one more, act once more” urges one to move one other person to act for human rights and help create a groundswell.

AI’s Shetty said that activism is a powerful force for change, a shown by the brave protestors in the so-called “Arab Spring.”

AI began as an idea of ordinary people working together to defend human rights and gathered at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in London. From that small group started by British lawyer Peter Benenson, AI has grown to more than three million members and supporters all over the world. AI’s presence is felt in more than 150 countries through its human rights work and campaigns to free prisoners of conscience.

The AI anniversary launch was marked by a global symbolic toast to freedom all over the world. This gesture, AI said, pays tribute to two Portuguese students imprisoned for raising their glasses to liberty, an injustice that so enraged Benenson that he launched AI on May 28, 1981.

AI, the world’s largest human rights organization, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977.

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