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Cordi teachers include IPs’ and women’s issues in subjects

BAGUIO CITY (June 6) — Issues concerning indigenous peoples and women may now be taken up in schools in lesson plans developed by some 60 teachers from the different Cordillera provinces who attended a training-workshop to improve their skills and beef up their knowledge as educators.

The activity organized by the Educators Forum for Development (EFD), Paaralang Teresa Magbanua para sa mga Guro (PTMG), and UP Pahinungod shared that such concerns are not included in the textbooks provided by the Department of Education (DepEd).

In the lesson plan development workshops, the teachers specifically highlighted the role of women in the areas of Philippine and Cordillera history.

EFD Coordinator Cynthia Dacanay that the teachers can already integrate these developments into the curricula that they handle.

Teachers were also exposed to specific areas in Baguio City and Benguet to have a fuller grasp of the issues affecting women and indigenous peoples. As a part of the teachers’ summer training, community integration took place at Happy Hallow, where the participants saw how Ibalois are made squatters in their own lands due to the entry of Camp John Hay. Some of them went to Itogon town in Benguet where they discovered the ill effects of corporate mining. Other teachers visited with the workers from the City Export Processing Zone who shared their plight as contractual employees to the teachers.

Participants also had time to develop their lesson plans for the different subject areas in Math, Science, Languages and History integrating their insights on the knowledge gained during the lectures and workshops.

Dacanay added that the EFD plans to follow-through the training to continue to build the teachers’ consciousness on the issues presented in the training.

Resource speakers in the training included professors from the University of the Philippines in Diliman and in Baguio, Ateneo de Manila University, Saint Louis University (SLU) and representatives from non-government organizations and people’s organizations such as the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the Cordillera Women’s Education and Resource Center (CWERC) and the Dap-ayan ti Kultura to Kordilyera (DKK).

DepEd-CAR Director Dr. Remedios K. Taguba, who delivered an inspirational message at the last day, encouraged more teachers to attend such activities to develop their skills.

The EFD is an association of educators involved in curriculum development, while the PTMG is a concerned with alternative training for teachers. # via NORDIS

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