SUSTAINABILITY

CRISTINA D. AGULTO

Efficiency and productivity gains are important, but they are not enough to sustain the educational system.

Educational leaders recognize the need to achieve a sustain quality education and to foster a culture of excellence and continuous improvement in education. However, achieving excellence and instituting quality and improvement in schools needs to be more than just an exercise in defining and adhering to processes. Efficiency and productivity are important components in the educational system as they are essential to creating a climate that empowers and equips school leaders to drive for improvements in the context of the changing workplace. Even then, these two elements are not enough to sustain the educational system as there are other factors that may contribute to achieve school development. Such factors include ongoing efforts to improve out puts, performances, products, services and processes. These efforts can seek improvement over time. It is based on the belief that these changes will add up to the sustainability of the educational system over time and if is much about changing the beliefs of the school organization to focus on opportunities for greater sustainability rather than problems.

Efficiency and productivity are vital given to the rapid changes in the workplace. These are highly effective mind set, culture, and tool kit for navigating, focusing, and improving a midst the changes schools are undergoing at many levels.

The goal of sustainability is to make things better through identifying opportunities and striving towards a stated goal. Also, sustainability aims at making changes that result in a better outcome and identifies that result in better outcomes.

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The Author is Teacher I at Emigdio A. Bondoc High School, San Roque, San Luis, Pampanga

AILEEN A. DIMALANTA

The Department of Education, through the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service (DRRMS), will host the Second National Climate Change Conference with the theme “Climate Action for Sustainable Development: Driving Change in Philippine Schools” this November.

The conference aims to increase awareness of stakeholders on the impacts of climate change to children and the youth; provide a platform to share research activities on climate change adaptation, best practices, and innovations in schools; and encourage the engagement of students and teachers in climate change adaptation activities within schools for building climate change r esi l i ency.

The conference will showcase researches and student projects related to climate change adaptation and mitigation through a research forum and a student exhibit.

The target participants for the research forum are teachers and researchers from public and private schools, as well as DepEd DRRM coordinators, DRRM practitioners, climate change advocates and senior high school students from public and private schools.

Coordinators, practitioners, climate change advocates and academicians are encouraged to share their research and submit their abstracts on climate change adaptation and mitigation in schools in the themes of Policy Development and Management in CCA; Experiences and innovations on climate change adaptation in schools; and community linkages and networking for CCA in schools.

The first theme is a broad theme covering issues, challenges, effective practices, status reports on the development, adaptation or localization of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in schools.

The second theme covers product innovations, innovative practices, new methods, and approaches that are utilized or introduced to raise awareness on climate change and to promote climate change adaptation in schools.

The third theme aims to present documented researches on the interactions and partnerships between schools, national government agencies, national and international non-government organizations, local government units, businesses, and other policy, practice and research communities.

Types of contributions are oral and poster presentations. For oral, each presentation will last 15 minutes and will be presented in parallel thematic sessions, while the poster presentation will be exhibited during the conference poster session.

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The author is Teacher III at Mitla Elementary School, Porac West District