Luistro urges public school teachers to respond to global challenges

MANILA, Philippines - Education Secretary Armin Luistro urged public school teachers to exert their best to respond to global challenges even as he stressed that anyone can do it regardless of their rank or what school they belong to.

Speaking before the recent Globe Telecom Global Filipino Teachers – Mindanao Cluster graduation ceremonies in Cagayan de Oro City, Luistro underscored the need for the graduates to show and prove their proficiency as GFTs to their students at all times.

“Being a Global Filipino Teacher is not an entitlement. It’s about what you and I can do now. We don’t have to be in a big school, we don’t have to be a principal, we don’t have to be a superintendent to serve,” Luistro said.

 “If you count the things you’ve done (for the school and the students) without any substantial increase in your budget, you prove that Filipinos can do it. You prove that good ideas not only emanate from having money but it comes from the mind and heart which always look for ways to create new knowledge for the students,” he told the 60 graduating teachers from public schools in regions 9, 10, 11, and 12.

On the other hand, Rob Nazal, Globe corporate social responsibility head said: “We envision this program to be a platform that will equip public school teachers with the 21st century skills using ICT which will eventually pave the way into their transformation as global teachers.”

In fact, one of the GFT graduates Shateen Serana, a teacher at the Taluksangay National High School in Zamboanga del Sur won the Asia-Pacific Innovative Teachers Leadership Awards (ITLA) sponsored by Microsoft Corp. held in New Zealand last March and will be representing the region in the international competition this month.

Serana used the knowledge gained from the GFT training program to come up with a plan to use social networking sites to gather support for her students’ mangrove conservation project.

GFT is being conducted by Globe Telecom in partnership with the Coalition for Better Education which provides the lessons and modules. It is a 54-hour training program on effective classroom management using information and communications technology for selected schools and teachers in the country and has already covered 386 teachers in 374 schools nationwide.

 GFT is only one of the education initiatives of Globe in response to the Adopt-a-School program of DepEd launched 12 years ago to generate investments from the business sector, non-government organizations, and other stakeholders to help upgrade and modernize public elementary and high schools.

Globe has so far adopted over 2,000 public schools nationwide where it provided internet connection via its Internet-in-Schools Program (ISP) as well as teaching and skills development under GFT. Globe is also a member of the Text2Teach consortium which gives opportunities to elementary school students to learn faster via educational video materials downloaded from the mobile phone.