JAGNA. A port town 63 kilometers from Tagbilaran. Land area 12,000 hectares. Population 31,000. Classified as a fourth class municipality. An unlikely place to find a mountain climber.
But that's where Christopher and Marivic Bernido are. Educators--now unintentionally moving educators around the country to climb with them. SERENDIPITY?
Christopher and Marivic both graduated from the University of the Philippines National Institute of Physics (NIP). Sent abroad for further studies, they returned to the country, equipped with Ph.D's in Theoretical Physics and went back to U.P. to be part of the faculty.
But Chris had a dream of putting up a research center for Theoretical Physics in the country. He decided to pursue his dream in his family hometown, Jagna.
Meanwhile, the family-ran school in Jagna – Central Visayan Institute (CVI)-- set up in 1929 by Chris' grandfather, was not doing well. His 77 year-old mother, who was running the school then, felt that she needed help. Their high school graduates were not going on to college because college was too expensive and most were not performing well on entrance exams to universities around the country.
So Chris and Marivic agreed to lend a helping hand. They left their positions at UP (Chris was formerly director, Marivic assistant) and moved to Jagna.
Much of Chris' initial efforts went toward the research center which began to hold workshops and host triennial international conferences attracting some of the best physicists in the world, two of whom have --since their visit to Jagna-- become Nobel laureates. Seminars were organized to transfer technology and know-how and help improve the research and academic programs of other institutions in the Visayas and Mindanao .
Marivic's efforts, meantime, went toward studying the school system. She realized that the traditional teaching methods developed in the West were not effective in the Philippine context. They motivated the strong students but not the weaker ones. She remembered the words of her mother—a teacher.
Ang magaling na teacher ay hindi nakikita sa magaling na estudyante. Pag yung mahina na estudyante ay napagaling, yun ang magaling na teacher |
Marivic and Chris began to work out a program called the Dynamic Learning Program (DLP).
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