Happy Independence Day: My Feelings as a Filipino

Since it is the Philippine's Independence Day, I would like to share a short passage I wrote a few months ago about my feelings as a Filipino. This passage was written when I was learning about a republic act. I also read some articles regarding the history of the Philippines and that honestly made me grow to love the country even more. I’ve come to realize the efforts of my ancestors and Filipino heroes for making the country a remarkable one. From brains to talents and strengths, we can find everything here in the Philippines.

"I am purely a proud Filipino. I see the Philippines as a beautiful country, from its lands to its people. Everything about it is just beautiful. The country is progressing very well these days; thanks to the brilliant citizens, faithful leaders and of course, the brave Filipino heroes. Those who fought for the country’s freedom made a mark in my heart of their love in our very own nation.

However, my feelings as Filipino somewhat changes. Seeing my fellow Filipino citizens putting the Philippines into a shameful country makes me question myself about the pride. The saddest part is even some of our political leaders tried to put a bad image of our motherland.

Despite all of those factors, I made a promise to myself to become a change for the betterment of the country. It’s like a life mission to guide the youth to the right path. I’ll do my best to enlighten them with the importance of loving and respecting their homeland. As a future Social Studies teacher, I made this as my life purpose; to touch the lives, educate the youth and guide them in making the country a decent place to live for the next generations. It will take a lot of time, but everything will be worth it."

It's the Philippine's 120th Independence Day. May this day be a meaningful reminder to each of us about the courage and sacrifices our heroes and ancestors had made and may this also inspire us to become better and be a more responsible citizen for our motherland, the Philippines.

                MALIGAYANG ARAW NG KALAYAAN PILIPINAS!

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#PressForProgress - International Women's Day 2k18

It is now March and that marks the celebration for this year's International Women's Day.

Many people all over the world celebrate this important day with different campaigns, festivals, and other activities; just to show the support for women and most importantly for gender parity.

When we say gender parity, it simply means GENDER EQUALITY.

But what exactly is gender equality?

 "Gender equality is achieved when women and men enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including economic participation and decision-making, and when the different behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and favoured." -Gender Equality in Ireland

"Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world." -United Nations

I am a woman myself, and I honestly don't celebrate or do something to commemorate this important day. However, as I was following Miss Universe 2017 Demi-Leigh Nel Peters, I saw one of the videos she posted on Instagram about the campaign for Women's day. As I looked up to it, I immediately got interested in joining the campaign by writing it here on my blog.

This year's campaign theme will be #PressForProgress. Every individual is given a chance to join the campaign by doing an action/s that can promote gender parity.

"As an ordinary person, what can I do about it?"

I know this question has been popping up in your mind while we talk about gender parity, thinking that not everyone will be given the chance to be heard. However, we must have all forgotten that big things came from the smallest things a person can make.

So?

Start within yourself. Whether you're a man, woman, or someone belonging to the LGBTQ community, you can do the simplest things.

As a woman, deciding on what skills you want to develop, and choose the course you want to study in college is already an act of gender parity.

As a man, respecting your sister/mother/cousin/friends/girlfriend/wife and supporting them of whatever their dreams are is already an act of gender parity.

The main point of this talk is that we do not isolate anyone from deciding, or even from thinking and sharing their own opinion. Even from the simplest things, give everyone the chance to speak up and to even decide. Let us stop discriminating and have an open-mind in different ways.

I encourage everyone to join the campaign by visiting the International Women's Day website and select one area that you want to concentrate.

There are still a lot of women in the world treated with so much inequality, and as individuals who are enjoying this gender parity, let us be their voice and influence other people by leading an example.

Just like what they said "Individually, we're one drop but together we're an ocean. "

Let us all start with ourselves and become an endless ripple.

How about you? HOW WILL YOU PRESS FOR PROGRESS?

Source:
International Women's Day Official Website
United Nations Organization
Gender Equality in Ireland

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SMARTPHONES: To Connect or Disconnect?

Before I start the main point of this post, I want to share something that I experienced for quite a long time already. Ever since these smartphones became an easy-to-buy technology, it drastically changed how one interacts with people.

1. One time, I had a schoolmate which I eventually became friends on Facebook. We messaged each other as if we're so close, but when we met along the school's hallways, we unexpectedly looked away as if we really don’t know each other. I realized that we can just comfortably talk through Facebook. 

 2. Another one is when my family would eat out in a restaurant. As we sat down, I can observe most people in the restaurant would be busy interacting for a few minutes; catching up, take some photos together, and all of the sudden, everyone's silent. Why? because they're now busy uploading and updating their social media. Some would just casually look at their phone until their orders arrive.  

3. It has been a common scenario for young students to play video games online. Some would play by a team in a computer shop, and some would just spend their day with their smartphones playing Mobile Legends and Clash of clans. I agree that these kinds of games are very addictive, which will then make these individuals facing their computers and smartphones for a whole day than interact with real people. 

4. Alright, this one really broke my heart. We really celebrate special events in a very special way. We would even hire an event organizer and rent a fancy function hall just to celebrate the day [plus a photographer/videographer to capture every moment.]. Since it is a get-together event, it is expected for everyone to talk and do some catch ups. Let's say in a WEDDING, once the bride walks down in the aisle, all of the guests would stand up and witness her going to her groom. But in this generation, people would do something else. Most of them are taking out their phones to take a photo of the bride which is quite distracting. Can you even imagine walking down with full of smartphones facing you?  Even in a birthday celebration, people are making sure to capture the best photo of the birthday celebrant blowing her candle. We can even ask the question "Who are the real guests here? These people or their smartphones?".

Have you witnessed these scenarios too?

A mobile phone has been one of the basic things that we must carry around all the time. Just like one of my college instructors told us before, mobile phones now are more of a need than a want. As our society becomes an advance village, we need it to communicate with other people. 

According to an article in the Art Institute, early cell phones were just for talking. Gradually, features like voicemail were added, but the main purpose was talk. Eventually, cell phone manufacturers began to realize that they could integrate other technologies into their phone and expand its features. The earliest smartphones let users access email, and use the phone as a fax machine, pager, and address book. (2015)

The invention of mobile phones was to originally talk with someone on the other line. That is, therefore, to communicate much easier than by sending letters and have it delivered to the post office.

In a span of more than 40 years, from its very first portable mobile phone, the evolution and emergence of mobile phones boomed. From a thick regular antenna-built-in mobile phone to a thin-all-in-one smartphone. At first, only the people from a high-class family can purchase a mobile phone. But now, these mobile phones are being sold in the market for a very affordable price. 

Now let's assume that most people owned a mobile phone, specifically a smartphone. This kind of mobile phone has a lot of features: You can message, call, surf, play, watch, listen, take pictures and navigate. Did this kind of invention make us connect more to the people, or disconnected us mainly from the whole world?

What did you realize when I shared my experiences earlier? Did the mobile phone really serve its main purpose in connecting and helping these people to communicate? Or did it completely malfunctioned and caused other people to prefer to stay at home and spend time with their technology?

Too much use of smartphones made us unconsciously unlearn our social skills, from an independent individual into a technology-dependent, from attending real parties into playing Dota in parties. Smartphones are supposed to help our life become much easier and faster. However, it made us into a dumb-dull-skill less individual.

Smartphones can already do anything for us. We can just say "Hey Siri/Google/[insert name]” and it can already send a message, call, take photos, research, play music and videos and even navigate. It turned out that we can now just comfortably ask the virtual mobile assistant rather than learning how to politely ask someone for help.

Why? It’s simple. Us humans have the mentality of “Since it can already do it, why do we need to still learn it?”. When we know that our phones have calculators, we can just stop learning math because something else can do the solving for us. When we know that we can call and text someone anytime, we do not need to make time for them personally. We even prefer to record every event of our lives through our phones, rather than witnessing it with our own eyes. We now cared to share everything on Facebook, or else we'll be called outdated beings.

This made the world an awkward place to live in. Since we already know that there is a smartphone that can do this and that for us, we stopped making effort for the people important for us, we stopped improving ourselves because we can already depend everything on these technologies.

Source:
Art Institute
uSwitch

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Freedom: What does it mean to be free?

All of us are granted of what we call "freedom".We are free to express ourselves, choose our own religion, or even decide what we want to do in our life. We basically have the ability to act according to our own will.

Freedom is being supported by legal laws [Bill of Rights], yet, humans are still craving for more. But now, do well really know the real meaning of freedom?

In an educational platform called "Quipper", it defined freedom as

"the power or right to act, speak, or think as you want without hindrance or restraint.". 

Along with freedom, another word was described: Prudence

"an act of making good judgment that allows a person to avoid risks.". 

Therefore, we have freedom saying that we can do whatever we want, yet we have to be prudent for us to avoid causing any harm from our own decisions. This simply means that every decision we make comes with a consequence.

Then our decision-making is being challenged. Everything we do, big or small, is made from a decision. Let us have a common example of decision-making. Humans eat every day, and you have the freedom to eat all of the chips that you can find, or enjoy a feast of french fries from your favorite fast food chain and even drink a liter of coke in a day. You also have the freedom to eat your own balanced meal, drink enough glasses of water and do a regular workout. Thinking about it, these two choices have different consequences. The first one can just give you empty calories and full of fats and eventually make you ill, and the second one can make your body healthy and fit.

It is also up to you if you're going to wake up early or not; take a shower or just wash your face; eat regularly or skip your breakfast. A decision as simple as that can already affect your whole life. What much more if we have to make bigger decisions for our future? Such as to finish our work or slack off for a while; and engage in pre-marital sex or stick with no sex until marriage.

We have parents setting a curfew, schools making a long list of rules and regulations, and kids busy shouting for freedom. Where is freedom if our security is at stake? We have to consider that there is no such thing as absolute freedom. If we are aiming for a peaceful community, restrictions must be made.

We also have the freedom to express oneself, but that doesn't mean that we can already abuse it and offend someone with it. When we have freedom, we have the power to do it.

What does it mean to be free? It means being responsible and prudent in every action we make.

As we enjoy our freedom in this world, we also have to keep this line in mind.

With great power comes great responsibility.

 -Spiderman                   

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My Philosophies of Life

I believe most of us are living by a philosophy [some might also call it a principle]. No matter how simple or complicated it is, we live every single day by this philosophy.

To those who don't specifically have a philosophy, you might ask "What is living by a philosophy would mean in my life?", "Do I need to learn philosophy just to have a philosophy in life?", or "Do I even need to know what philosophy I must live by?"

According to reallylivelife 

"Philosophy of life is an overall vision or attitude toward life and the purpose of life.". 

With a philosophy, it will help us become positive towards life, no matter how dark and stormy it is. 

As for me, I have three of many philosophies I always keep in mind. 

3. Finish what you have started

This philosophy greatly helped me with my daily life. I am someone who would easily get distracted by other stuff. I am someone who always makes a long list of "New Years' Resolution". I would write about diet, studies, improve oneself and more. It's a list that kept on repeating every single year. haha. don't laugh. 

One of my goals for the past years is to finish my undergraduate studies. All of us struggled with finishing a 4-year course in college. It frustrates us so much that we almost wanted to stop. During the first 2 years of college, we thought that we can just easily finish this. Then when we stepped on our 3rd and 4th year, there's never been a day that we thought of not quitting. Fortunately, with guidance and prayers, I was able to graduate on time, and even passed my board examination. Thank God! 

2. Keep moving forward

This philosophy has been inspired by the movie "Meet the Robinsons" by Disney. This helped me accept every failure I had in my life. Rather than viewing such experiences as a negative impact, I actually valued it as a lesson and be happy about it. Who knows, better things are on the way to our lives?

Let's admit it. All of us are wishing for something. We would even insist or force it until we can finally have it. We also experience the times when we failed to have it. Then we get disappointed, sad, depressed, everything that is negative. We would even blame God for it. 

As I reflected on it, I realized that these things that I actually want in my life are not for me. If we can't have it, then maybe it's not really for us. It's not yet the proper time to claim the prize. Simple as that. However, this doesn't mean that we will just give up. The point is we just need to keep improving ourselves until we are prepared enough to aim our goal in life.

Whenever we experience a bad day, always remember that it's only a bad day, not a bad life.

1. THE GOLDEN RULE: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you

I always live by this philosophy. This inspired and guided me to do good to everything. I know, all of us are sinful. We cannot avoid committing a sin. But through this philosophy, it will always remind me that doing bad just means that I'm doing bad to myself too. 

For example, disobeying my parents. I always felt bad doing this to my mom and dad. It made me think that "If I kept on doing this to my parents, my kids in the future might do this to me as well!". Well, I honestly believe in karma. The karma might not bounce back to us, but things we do would indirectly hit our future children and grandchildren. 

It's a great philosophy every mankind must live by. I mean, come on! We will not lose a thing if we just keep this philosophy in mind, right? This will also help us lead a better and peaceful life with other people.

There's nothing wrong living with a philosophy. It would even help us to stay positive in every second of our life. Our lives are too short than what we expected. We have to live every moment and treasure it. As we go on, let us inspire other people, most importantly the youth. We might be able to make a difference just by simply showing other people how we live with a philosophy/principle.

How about you? What is your philosophy in life? 

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How to Effectively Teach Social Studies in 21st Century?

Many people think that Social Studies is one of the hardest specializations to handle. A lot of information to remember, it's too broad, and it's not just everyone's cup of tea. However, the challenge is more than that. It is how we, the teachers, must deliver such lessons to the young learners.

Yes, most people think it's boring, it's unnecessary, it's exhausting. That is just because of how the subjects are being taught. We must have experienced our teachers asking us to remember the dates when the World War 1 began until the end of World War 2, or memorize the correct order of all the presidents from the Philippines, or how many years the Spaniards, Americans and the Japanese colonized our country?

We will then question the importance of learning it. Why is it necessary to remember all those things? What's in it for me? Will it help me find a stable job in the future?

That is how we were taught traditionally. But now that we are in the 21st century already, many things were developed. Different trends have been exposed, and techniques and strategies were introduced to fit the learning styles of the young learners today.

During my undergraduate studies, one of our Social Studies teachers introduced to us one specific strategy that can be applied to any fields of this specialization. What is it?

~CONTEXTUALIZATION~

First, let us define the Contextualization.

"Researchers and academics Berns, Robert G. and Erickson, Patricia M. defines contextualized learning as a practice that endeavors to link theoretical constructs that are taught during learning, to practical, real-world context." source: Efront

To put it simply, contextualization is to connect the lessons from the textbooks to the real-world of the students. For example, we are teaching about the Presidents of the Philippines and their contributions. We may utilize an activity that will develop their leadership skill by asking them about what they're going to do if they'll be elected as a mayor, senator, or even a president. What are they going to aim to make the society a better place to live?

Another example is when we discuss the production in Economics. There are factors in production; namely the land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. Most Filipinos are becoming a part of the business world, might as well as our students in the future. We may let them design a business plan depending on the needs of their hometown by considering the factors of productions. It will activate their business-minded character. Who knows, some of them might be already designing their future?

Under the Contextualization, we have something we call the localization. To make it specific, it is to adapt the curriculum to local conditions and relating the context of the curriculum and the process of teaching and learning to the local environment (Taylor 2004). Therefore, we modify our strategies and maximize the materials based on the local needs of the school.

Example, we talked about culture in a school in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon. The best way to emphasize culture is to introduce Kaamulan festival to the class. Rather than talking about the culture overseas, why not let them learn about the differences of the seven tribes of their own province. This will let them be more aware and appreciate more of their hometown.

This strategy is all about linking the lesson to the life of the learner. It is to let each of them realize the importance and inspire them to improve their selves from their past. It helps the students develop and practice their skills for them to be prepared for the real world.

We can just explain contextualization by this way:

"CONTEXTUALIZATION = REAL-WORLD APPLICATION"

As a Social Studies major, this really caught my attention. As we experienced being spoonfed about all the information, learning about contextualization really helped me improve myself as an educator.

As I am still starting my teaching career, it is expected for me to face many difficulties. But I am thankful for our teachers for updating us on the newest trends and strategies that we can really use as we go and face the real world.

Teaching has never been easy. No matter what field a teacher is teaching, it needs a keen preparation to deliver each lesson properly. We need to give time and update ourselves to let us connect to the generations of students that we will be teaching.

I only talked about one strategy in this post, but teachers, always remember that there is no such thing as the BEST STRATEGY. We should always consider the needs and capacity of our learners. Remember! there are more strategies that we can use. Just give time and update yourself. This will really help us make the teaching-learning experience be more meaningful for both the teachers and learners.

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HISTORY: How Important Is It?

History has been taken for granted by many people.

Questions like "Why do we need to study it?", "Past is in the past, why bother learning about it?", "It's boring, can we skip History?"

Little did they know, history can help us become a better person we can be. History is not just all about what's in the books. It's not just all about who are the heroes and villains of the past. It is to learn on how to appreciate the contributions from our ancestors and how to value the mistakes made from our past.

Everything we do is going to be part of the history. Just like what Edward Hallet Carr said "History is ... a dialogue between the present and the past. ". Studying this will help us connect our past to the present, and prepare us for our future.It helps us understand the reasons why we live the way we live right at this moment.

We may have learned about the two world wars, the French revolution, the Renaissance, or even our country's colonizers, but just like what I said earlier, it's not just all about what's in the books. This is more like a big preparation for every individual in facing the real world.

As educators, regardless of the specialization, our role is to let our students learn more than what is printed on a 300-page-book. We honestly don't need to memorize all the information we can find in our textbooks, it is all about appreciating and realizing the importance of history, and that is for us to learn from the past's mistake, and avoid to repeat the same action again. By learning, generally, it will practice and develop our soft and hard skills which will eventually make us become well-prepared adults in the future.

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