(L-001) Not-so-Smooth Sailing

Not-so-Smooth Sailing.

According to the 18th Congress – Senate Bill No. 1190 of the Philippines, the average class size of elementary public schools in the Philippines is 43.9, a few tens above our neighboring countries hence, affecting the effectiveness of teachers educating said classes. According to the same bill, the implementation of such bill is to help alleviate aforementioned problems.

Now, that is not exactly the case for me. I wasn’t packed in a classroom with more than 50 students, well, not anymore since I’m not in a public school anymore I suppose. My first problem on the other hand are still regarding class size.

When I first enrolled in my current school, I couldn’t remember as to why, but I was mixed into a single class. Now, for context, I was Grade 11, Covid-19 was just declared as a pandemic by WHO a few months ago, all of us was as prepared as we can be for online classes, a all of us (hopefully) has picked and enrolled according to our chosen strand. Now for me, that was Technical-Vocational-Livelihood, computer hardware servicing. Handsy.

A few days later, I was confirmed to be enrolled to my selected school and was added to the class group chat. Now, I wasn’t exactly mad or surprised, but when test piloting the classes, I learned that the whole class wasn’t exactly people of the same strands. We were oriented about how the school is gonna approach the quarantine, the pandemic, and online learning, kind of like how things would’ve went in the our usual Filipino first day past normal classes, except online, through the computer.

According to the teacher that oriented us back then, we were to be taught the non “handsy” stuff this year, with the following year being the time where it will be mostly hands on and where we’ll finally be sorted according to our strand. It was all nice and fun, I did noticed that there were only so little amount of people that took the TVL strand, not that I care. Unlucky for me, that turned out to be a premonition, a harbinger of what was about to happen the year after.

Anyway, that year didn’t really flow smoothly which is to be expected since online learning was very alien to us since Philippines internet capabilities isn’t that great even if you look at it in a good light. That year wasn’t easy. Deadlines were broken, extended, and bended, Students would disconnect midway or even end up not attending classes for plethora of reasons, and we’d constantly try to appeal to our teachers to maybe lengthen or extend deadlines, sometimes even trying to ask for allowance for us to pass very, VERY due activities.

Well, that was the first year done. Not exactly smooth, but we passed the trials. some deadlines were missed completely, and our grades weren’t exactly shining, but we got through.

On to the second year.

#001

Leven