REBUILDING THE BROKEN PIECES OF READING
IVY EMILY N. PEREZ
In the fight to close the learning gap in our school, we shouldn't accept anything less than the best. Many students suffer as a result of their academic deficiencies. Similar to the fissures on an armor's chinks, their lack of education frequently leads to their demise. One day of reading every week is the remedy that the DepEd has come up with.
Catch-up Friday is a band-aid stickered on a bleeding wound that is the learning gap. It’s a cop-out response to an issue that has been solved through good education with a strong foundation. Intentional or not, by design the catch-up Friday implementation is only a temporary solution to a colossal problem. It can only do so much before it hands off the students and teachers with diminishing returns.
Supposedly, it is the DepEd’s goal to strengthen the core pillars of the basic education curriculum, but their move of placing their eggs on the catch-up Friday basket is beyond counter-productive and a blunder. Not only is it extremely dependent on the teacher’s expertise on their respective subject, but also on the teacher-student engagement. If any of the two are lacking or half hearted, then the whole premise of catch-up Friday will collapse.
Finding teachers that fit the catch-up Friday implementation is exponentially harder than creating an implementation that fit the teachers. There are better ways to strengthen the basic education curriculum. In fact, the whole purpose of the catch-up Friday should have been integrated in the curriculum in the first place.
Catch-up Friday treats every student the same, literate or not. It’s a one size-fits-all kind of solution. Drop everything and re-think DepEd because It will never be enough to address the issue. We must dig deep in order to get to the bottom of this, and we must act upon it. We must forge a permanent solution in order to stop the plague that can jeopardize the future of our country. Our measures today will serve as the foundation of tomorrow, and if we fail then by no means we will not be punished for our sins, but by them.
-oOoThe is Teacher I at San Juan High School – Mexico