Teachers agog over new book shopping experience

MANILA, Philippines – There’s a new and fun way to put good books in teachers’ hands to better cultivate young Filipino minds — by organizing book shopping events for teachers.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through its Education Quality and Access for Learning and Livelihood Skills (EQuALLS2) Project, recently organized one in Lutayan, Cotabato City, in a warehouse turned book center.

Fifty-one public elementary school teachers from the municipality had the time of their lives poring over more than 9,000 titles of expensive books published by some of the world’s best publishers such as Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, and Pearson Education, to find those that that could help them teach English, science, and math better to their students.

Then they got to take back with them those books for free. Melanie Quillamor, a grade five teacher at the Panagas-Devera Elementary School, took back a huge mathematics flipchart with vivid photos and vibrant colors, which she said would keep her students’ minds glued on the material so that they would better understand math concepts.

Sheryl Loria, a grade five teacher at the Tamnag Central Elementary School, took back a science textbook with pictures that are so vivid they look like real animals.

“This frog looks as if it will suddenly jump on you,” she said.

The colorful and glossy pictures and the big sizes promise to excite young minds, which should help them learn faster and better; and the books’ sturdy materials should make them last longer.

“This is my very first shopping experience in which I did not feel guilty afterwards,” said Zosimo Tugada, a grade six teacher at the Maindang Elementary School.

Prior to opening this book center for teachers from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and regions 9 and 12, where the EQuALLS2 Project is being implemented, the project held book fairs for teachers in the cities of Koronadal and Zamboanga to make the books it donates are really what the teachers need. Such books could better find their way in classrooms to improve basic education instead of just collecting dust in school libraries.

More than 750 teachers, principals, and district supervisors trooped to the book fairs. With the success of the book fairs, the project turned its book warehouses in Cotabato City and Zamboanga City into book centers for teachers.

The teachers are given vouchers that they can exchange for free books at the centers.

The books are donated by the US-based Brother’s Brother Foundation, one of the world’s biggest private book donors, to USAID through the EQuALLS2 Project. More than 800,000 such books are now in the hands of teachers in the ARMM and regions 9 and 12.

The project expects to distribute about a million more books by 2011 to teachers to reinforce English, science, and math instruction in Mindanao’s public elementary schools.