Adapting to the New Normal: How Shifting the Focus to Home Learning Partners Helped Launch a School Year
May 25, 2021
From the Learning Continuity Innovations: An Emerging Good Practice Digest - Digest #5
Learning Continuity Innovations is developed by the ABC+: Advancing Basic Education in the Philippines, a partnership project between the Department of Education (DepEd) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve early grade learning in the Philippines. To subscribe to our online digest, or share your emerging good practice, please contact us at [email protected].
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Background
When the Department of Education rolled out the Basic Education – Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP), Lamba Elementary School took immediate action to support, strengthen and capacitate one of their most valuable resources that could help them spell the difference between failure and success: the learners’ parents or guardians, also known as home learning partners (HLP).
By being sensitive to the plight of the HLPs and by listening to their needs, this medium school in one of the coastal and mountainous rural communities of Albay was able to overcome the challenges when school reopened and was able to create a system for HLPs to successfully deliver quality education to their children.
Challenges
The changing educational landscape put tremendous pressure on HLPs, and consequently, on the children.
Being a school in a small community, parents' and guardians’ cooperation has never been an issue for Lamba ES. But as the pandemic shifted the home learning partners’ role – from secondary to primary actors in their children’s education – the support they needed from the school and teachers also changed.
To many HLPs, the lack of teaching know-how, subject expertise, resources, technological savviness, and time to juggle teaching and working or tending to the family, led to adverse results. As parents’ and guardians’ role pivoted to full-time home teachers, their mental and emotional readiness got tested. The changing educational landscape put tremendous pressure on HLPs, and consequently, on the children.
Imposed community lockdowns also posed a huge challenge to the school and home learning partners. Due to the restricted movement around the community, the distribution and retrieval of learning modules became challenging.
Communicating with HLPs was also difficult for the school. Some HLPs did not have cellphones or enough load credits to respond or to make calls to their children’s teachers when they needed help. Others lived in areas with weak to no reception at all. The limited opportunities to interact with teachers and fellow parents made it difficult for some home learning partners to get the timely guidance that they needed to help their children accomplish their home learning.
These challenges resulted in low submission of modules; unfinished or incomplete lessons and activities; and poor learner grades. As time went by, the pressure HLPs experienced slowly turned into demotivation which reflected in the learners’ performance.
“…there is a need for us to strengthen our relationship with the home learning partners and the community to stay connected with learners so that no one will be left behind.” - Geraldine España, School Principal of Lamba ES
Despite these challenges, the school knew that the HLPs were their best partners in making home-based learning work.
Having identified the parents' and guardians’ lack of opportunity to get timely help and guidance, as well as the arduous distribution and retrieval of modules, as their biggest roadblocks, Lamba ES conducted a weekly face-to-face consultation and kumustahan for HLPs and created a system for a more efficient distribution and retrieval of modules.
“The distribution and retrieval system that Lamba ES created was developed bearing in mind the most convenient modality in the community which is the Printed Modular Distance Learning (PMDL),” said Geraldine España, school head of Lamba Elementary School.
“The first 30 minutes of the one-hour per grade release and retrieval was spent for home partners’ feedbacking of the retrieved modules and the (second) half of the hour is for consultation on the released modules,” she added. These consultations and kumustahan created a space not just for HLPs to get clarification on lessons and activities with their children’s advisers but also for teachers to give the home learning partners tips on how to teach their children better and, at times, to debrief them on the difficulties they faced in their new role. The sessions were also used by teachers to monitor their students’ progress and determine who among the HLPs and learners needed additional attention and interventions like home visits.
Group walkthroughs of modules and other resources like the ABC+ learning materials were also done during this time. This helped HLPs to be more familiar with the different resources that they could use in teaching at home. To manage the influx of parents and guardians visiting the school, Lamba ES grouped home learning partners depending on their grade levels and assigned schedules to each group. In order to alleviate the worries of parents about their health and to encourage them to participate, the school made sure that health protocols and physical distancing were always observed inside the school premises during the sessions.
Since keeping in touch with other parents was also one of Lamba ES’s major challenges, they decided to enlist the help of other community members. The school sought help from neighbors and friends in communicating with HLPs and monitoring learners from remote areas or without mobile phones. Taking advantage of technology, the school also created online group chats to streamline communication with those who have access to the internet. Involving the community members not only helped in monitoring but also strengthened parent-to-parent communication.
“There are a lot of home learning partners with no cellular phones and internet connection, so there is a need for us to strengthen our relationship with the home learning partners and the community to stay connected with learners so that no one will be left behind,” said España.
Like many schools on the reopening of classes, Lamba ES had to overcome significant obstacles to ensure that their learners get the quality and relevant education they deserve. By focusing their efforts on enhancing the HLPs’ ability to teach their children and maximizing community relationships, the school successfully increased the HLPs’ skills and confidence in being education partners. The weekly check-ins also helped the teachers to focus on each HLP’s concerns and deliver quality feedback that would help the learners.
“Through the feedbacking and consultation between the home partners and teachers on pupils’ performance, the school was able to identify pupils at risk, adjust some activities and strengthen the partnership with home learning partners,” said España.
Though still imperfect, the enhanced weekly face-toface consultation and kumustahan of Lamba ES undoubtedly helped in the school’s successful reopening of classes. By listening and adapting to the needs of the community and by capacitating HLPs to become competent partners in their children’s learning, Lamba Elementary School, together with their community, found itself a step closer to reaching their goal in the new normal.