EMPOWERING TLE TEACHERS

PRECIOUS ANN M. CRUZ

The K to 12 program has set new goals in the Philippine education where Technology and Livelihood Education or TLE has come to the fore as a core component of courses in Junior High School and Senior High School. In the TLE subject, students choose their major course such as ICT, Electronics technology, food technology, agriculture and others. This course shall be their technical vocational track for the K-12 program and they shall pursue it up to the Senior High School.

As such, empowering the teacher involved in every major is important as he or she will be teaching in an exploratory period which is grade 7 or grade 8 then teaches the learning competency of the said area in grade 9 and grade 10, up to grade 11 and 12. It is therefore important that the TLE teacher has a broad knowledge of the skills that he or is teaching. TLE teachers are graduates of technical–vocational schools/ trade schools and universities specializing in the TLE area.

In a research based on Department of Education data, the number of teachers in secondary schools is normally based on the number of its students such that smaller number of students would mean smaller number of teachers. Due to the required number of teaching hours and limited number of section, teachers were forced to teach subjects other than his or her major.

The lack of TLE teachers among these schools plus the requirements of offering major course in the technical vocational track of the K to 12 program resulted in importing teachers from other subjects who just had training from informal or short term courses.

In the new curriculum the implementation of desire learning competency will still be implemented. The students are expected to meet the desired learning competency so as to be able to pursue college.

The classroom performance of TLE teachers, therefore, maybe improved by systematic evaluation. This aims to improve the quality of instructions, to assist the teacher in identifying areas that needs improvement.

Teachers’competency in carrying out the learning competency is a big factor especially on application of skills. The teacher should have not only the mastery of the subject but also a broader knowledge of the field. To fully achieve the purpose of the K-12 program, TLE teachers have to be empowered to strengthen the vocational skills of students.

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The author is SST I (TLE major) at San Pedro National High School, San Simon, Pampanga