By May Anne Love B. Deseo
DAVAO CITY—Senior High School Coordinator of Davao City National High School (DCNHS) Evangeline Manguilimotan said that they have aimed towards the preparedness for senior high school classes set to start on June 13.
Manguilimotan said that the school faced shortages in terms of chairs and tables for classrooms, but this concern was addressed already by the Department of Education.
“The chairs to be put into the classrooms have already started being delivered,” she told DavaoToday on Tuesday, June 7.
With an estimate of 700 senior high school students enrolled, they will be broken down into 17 sections with around 45-50 students in each.
She said they will be offering three tracks: the arts and design, academics, and Technical Vocational Livelihood (TVL). Under the academic track, said Manguilimotan, is the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM), and, Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMS).
In the case of lacking teachers, she said, for example if the school lacks personnel for senior high school classes, “qualified” junior high school teachers are “ready to take over” the classes.
DCNHS Academic Track Coordinator Joel Felicilda said that they conducted an early enrollment in order for them to know how many teachers they needed and were to hire, likewise the number of classrooms and sections.
He said that there are criteria which they used as bases in hiring the teachers: education, training, demo teaching performance, interview, and English proficiency. When scores in each are totaled, the teachers are ranked, and the score cut-off is 70.
Jed Bete, junior high school teacher of social sciences said that the school has also utilized teachers with national certifications.
“As early as now we already have schedule of classes, we already have senior high school teachers,” Bete said.
He added that some junior high school teachers might end up teaching for the senior high school classes.
He explained that for teachers, they felt resistant ‘at first’ because they did not completely understand the implementation of senior high school brought by the K-12 program. However, said Bete, after a while of “vast training,” they realized the benefits brought by K-12 in being globally competitive.
“On June 13, classes will really start,” he said. “Whether we like it or not we should be ready because this is for the benefit of our learners.” (davaotoday.com)
