WE ARE pleased with the leadership of Mayor Jerry Treñas amid the pandemic that is disrupting classes. He has called to proceed with the enrolment of students. To quote our city mayor, “We cannot let the fear of the coronavirus kill the opportunity for our people to acquire knowledge and skills.”
What is important is that proper physical distancing must be observed by the students while they are in their classes or in the campus. Mayor Treñas is supporting the various initiatives being undertaken by the Department of Education (DepEd) like online learning, modular or blended.
Education secretary Leonor Briones explained blended learning as a combination of varied approaches to teaching and learning, and it can be adjusted depending on the situation or the need of the school, as well as that of the students.
Perhaps many parents cannot understand some of these new teaching methods but what is important is that this will sustain the continuing interest of our students in their studies in spite of the pandemic and keep them from being distracted by other activities.
With Mayor Treñas pushing to keep our schools in the city open despite the pandemic, we hope that it is likewise done in the municipalities in the entire Iloilo province.
Continuing the attendance of students in school, preferably until college, must be encouraged. In the Philippine setting, for one to get a good job or to avail one’s self of better business opportunities in life, you have better chances if you finish college.
We always cite our personal case as example. Because there were four of us in our family of six children that were in college at that time, we thought it necessary to work our way through college to lessen the burden on the family.
What we did was to learn shorthand by self-study to catch up with the fast lecture in class when we entered college. Later, we found out that this qualified us to work as secretary-stenographer at the Manager’s Office of a commercial bank while we were in second year college, upon the recommendation of our Dean.
Starting as secretary-stenographer, we rose to become manager in the bank because the secretary-stenographer’s position gave us a good opportunity to learn of the manager’s job better than our co-employees in other departments.
We started in the bank as undergraduate, but we continued with our college studies in the evening, and when we finished, we were assigned to new branches being opened at that time in other parts of the country, first as cashier and later we rose to become manager and was proud to be back at the Iloilo Branch where we started, catching up with several personnel who were formerly our co employees.
We were the first Ilonggo to become manager of a bank run by Spanish-speaking executives at that time in higher management. We are proud relating this to our children in spite of the fact that all we attended was Spanish 101 in college!
Our life is an example of what continuing education can achieve.
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GEM OF THOUGHT
“Other fish to fry.” – If you have other fish to fry, it doesn’t matter if one opportunity fails to materialize as you have plenty of others.
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