Mirror of Light No. 49
August 23rd, 2008Mirror of Light
Published by the Newsletter Task Force of the National Spiritual Assembly
of the Baha`is of the Philippines
No. 49 | 23 AUGUST 2008
A report from Dawnbreakers Foundation
The total number of students benefiting from existing 13 Bahá’í-inspired schools last school year total 318 taught by 19 teachers. The school year 2008-09 shows an increase of students to over 350 taught by 25 teachers. The goodwill and high regard among public school authorities and local officials towards the Bahá’í-supported schools in their localities is significant, as they themselves testify during closing exercises in which they are usually invited as guest speakers. The many remarks from parents point to their growing admiration for the quality of education their children are receiving, who now exhibit a positive change in social behavior and early skills in reading and writing, in recitation of prayers and quotes, and in math and singing. Already in Bicol and Palawan a number of public elementary schoolteachers are vying with each other for graduates coming from tutorial schools.
Notable were reports of last school year shared by teachers of newly opened Bahá’í-inspired schools about home-visits in which re-connection was made with children’s families among whose members were those that became Bahá’ís years before and have subsequently lost touch with the developments in the Faith, but are now only too happy to have nieces, nephews or grandchildren enroll in these schools and join junior youth groups.
There are to date 54 teachers and future teachers enrolled in the foundation’s teacher training program, and they have taken so far from 3 to 10 of the training course units since these units began to be offered 16 months ago. Nearly all of them, moreover, are active in their cluster’s core activities as teachers, animators and tutors. Hence, more friends, especially in clusters with IPG, are seeing the coherence of Bahá’í-inspired schools with core activities of the Five Year Plan, understanding that the training program of their teachers is a branch of the institute’s main sequence of courses. Some course units of the foundation’s teacher training program contribute to enhancing understanding of the aims of Bahá’í-inspired education, to developing teacher attitudes and qualities corresponding to such aims, and to increasing competencies in core academic areas. Some other units are curricular elements consisting of teachers’ guide in the teaching of a 1-year preschool program (Curriculo Kinder Bahá’í) and a 3-year (Hidden Gems).
The foundation will this year need to hold teacher training in the Visayas and Mindanao, even as it continues to do so in Luzon. The training must be directed to result in the establishment of schools that contribute to the ongoing cluster growth processes, particularly the expansion and consolidation of the Bahá’í communities and enlargement of the community of interest. It also finds it important this coming year, as a next stage of development, to learn how to contribute to the development of the capacity of the friends to invite the larger community into the discourse about children’s education at this time in humanity’s social development, encourage them to become participants in establishing Bahá’í-inspired educational efforts of children and junior youths within, not without, the context and environment that ongoing growth processes of core activities and service to humanity are creating. For, ultimately, the schools the friends should envision would need to be schools endorsed by the community, schools that aim to channel systematically and holistically the civilizing influences of the new Revelation towards the generation of a new race of man.
