ABC+ PAR Feedback

Grace Rabelas, DepEd Region V Education Program Supervisor

• The four days have been inspiring and encouraging with this growing community of practice. This is a community who chose to learn, to explore, to support, and to step forward with the hope that we can contribute in our own little way in improving literacy education in the Philippines. Thank you for this empowering learning opportunity. Thank you to ABC+ and our mentors for systematically leading us in this tedious process. With your patient guidance, we are gradually enhancing our research skills as well as the soft skills that go with it. The topics we had this week are perfectly pitched for the next tranche of work that we need to do in the coming days. All in all, what we had this week reinforced our hope, our trust, and confidence in what we are doing.

Sixto Orzales, Assistant Professor from Bicol University

• Before, I used to think of research as a tedious or tiring endeavor, an additional workload that takes away my precious time to relax and enjoy life. But my engagement in this participatory action research changed all that. It is a game changer. It has allowed me to see the seemingly daunting task from a different lens. This second in-person meeting actually reminds me of an article that I read several years ago about former ABS-CBN executive Charro Santos. Whenever faced with challenges, for example, in revising the story of a teleseries to make sure it will be a big hit, she would say, “Palitan mo anlindin mo. At maging mas magaling.” Instead of looking at herself as an executive or a CEO, she imagines herself as one of the fans. The important thing is to change your perspective. Have you noticed how the change of your camera lens changes the picture? When you take a top view, the entire picture changes. What if we applied them to how we do research? Imagine writing the introduction and the related literature using global and local context related to specific research questions. What if learning how to code is learned through a guessing game? Or being more reflexive instead of being reflective? The possibilities are endless. As advocates of education, we are called to be lifelong learners. This experience has helped us realize the importance of learning and relearning knowledge. This experience taught us that every teacher is a researcher.

G.L. John C. Jaro, English Coordinator for DepEd Region VI

• I’d like to begin my impression with gratefulness. Research is not new to us, but it is good to be reminded, updated, and corrected on any misconceptions we may have about research. They were able to provide not only content support but affective support by tuning into what we felt. Thank you to fellow participants for being so participative and collaborative and making this a safe space. Because of the climate we created, everyone is given a chance to speak out freely. I’d like to share some of the takeaways I have: 1. What I loved most about this training was how it was able to chunk down the big word, research. It makes us feel it was really possible to eat an elephant. 2. The importance of seeking support, not only in our research but in life and work; when things feel heavy, may we have the courage to seek support. 3. Divide and conquer. 4. Celebrate little wins. Even just the accomplishment of the tools that we have, being able to finish the introduction fuels us to move forward to the task that we need to accomplish. We are excited to echo and share this enthusiasm for research with others.

Genevieve R. Conjusta, Assistant Professor at West Visayas State University

• Being the youngest in our team from WVSU and being “voluntold” by my elder sisters, I cannot say no for this task. To begin, on behalf of my colleagues from West Visayas State University, we are grateful and thankful for another “aha” moment in research writing. Thanks to mentors… your guidance, suggestions, supervisions, and comments pointed our work in the right direction. What I like most is you collaboratively mentor our work. I consider this week’s in-person training as enjoyable and fun. We were engaged with the different activities as we applied the gradual release model, so the activities are beneficial and highly significant as we developed our personal and professional skills. We also developed stronger relationships with one another through our simulation of the interviews and focus group discussions. We also extend our graduate to the ABC personnel for facilitating this training. As we go home to our respective places, we are now confident and guided enough in collecting and transcribing our data.