By Jacquelyn T. Eduardo, Teacher III, Langla ES

The school year that was suddenly turned to be the venue for the distribution and retrieval
of modules. Teachers were in constant coordination with parents or the guardians of their
learners, while learners stay at home to comply to the health protocols implemented. Teachers
were on virtual meetings with education authorities who were cascading the memoranda and
other forms of communication or attending webinars to update their professional knowledge
and skills. School heads and other administrators find ways to identify other needs both of the
learners and the teachers, monitor the flow of teaching learning process to ensure that
competencies are achieved as targeted. Everyone in school reached for the assistance and
support of stakeholders to continually safeguard the health of teachers and learners. The areas
in school where there is a need to maintain and improve the school facilities are executed even
in the absence of learners. There is a seemingly unending clamour for provision of learning
materials because this time the learners can no longer share their things because they stay at
home.
How about the parents? How did they fare as facilitators of learning at home? They were
also called as “channels of learning”, for through their effort, learning will be transferred from
the teachers to the learners in their respective homes. What could be their experiences as they
provide assistance and support to their own children? They have their own stories to tell, to
which recount their experiences from the start till the end of the school year. Hurdling with the

learning they want their children to gain amidst the difficult times. Others really sacrificed a
lot and will still be doing it again, now that the second year of home distance learning is the
modality being implemented. Their ordeals are not yet on hold; but like their children, they can
gradually embrace the system and when the pandemic subsides and face-to-face learning is
resumed, that’s the time they can say, “we have done our Herculian tasks with flying colors”.
Like for example Parent A. She is a mother of five children, all four of them enrolled
in the modular learning delivery modality, in Grades 3,4,5 and 6. Her husband works as a part
time laborer who is earning on a daily basis. Parent A who is a full-time housewife does all the
chores from cooking, washing clothes, bathing the children and others. In between these chores,
she has to attend to her children who are studying, answering the modules/LAS and sometimes
doing the performance task. Moreso, she is also the one who goes to school and return or get
the next set of modules. Considering the household chores that make her burn out, she has to
facilitate the studies of the 4 children and what is more difficult on her part was she is only an
elementary graduate, she admits some of the lessons are not familiar to her. One thing more,
the budget of the family is not enough to feed them all, so she can hardly buy load for her
phones and have data connection.
Parent B, on the other hand is a single parent, a father to his only son, and has a
common-law wife living with the. Parent B tends his little “sari-sari store” and repair pants
for some people in the neighbourhood. This is where they get their food and other expenses at
home. Meanwhile, he has his wife, who’s good enough to do the tutoring to his son and the
household chores. They do not earn much, but because of parent A’s valuing of education, he
regularly monitors the schooling of his son. Like parent A, he hardly gets a load for the data
connection, but he asks his wife to go to school and coordinate with the adviser on the needs
of his child.

Parent C and his son lives in shanty along the irrigation road; they don’t have any gadget
to use in communicating with the teacher, so she goes to school after rolling her bike and
peddling her own- grown “laing” leaves to teachers and bystanders. She did not finish any grade
but knows how to read and write. What is more depressing is her son’s health condition which
she brings on monthly check up asking help to local officials. There are times she could not get
and return the modules on time, but the teacher was very considerate to let him study after their
selling activities.
There are more parents and guardians with other struggles; nevertheless, they
overcome the hardships, for the sake of the children. What is good all about these situations,
parents never surrender in their difficult roles as parents, as facilitators and as providers of
their children’s needs.
In light of this, teachers are humane to give chances to those who cannot comply to the
schedules. When they hear the parents and learners’ plight, they give considerations and
maximum tolerance to meet half ways and push the modular learning delivery amidst the
pandemic.