WHAT'S THE DLP?

Under the DLP, lectures are only about 20 minutes, and the rest of the period is spent doing individual or group work. Students, using their own words, answer questions like

The work is entered into portfolios-- color-coded plastic-covered folders containing accomplished activity sheets in each course—all neatly accomplished in the student's own handwriting. All work is done within the school. Students have no homework. Evenings are for the family—household chores, building relationships.

They soon saw that it had many advantages. It needed less equipment especially for the sciences; teachers could rotate, so the school needed fewer teachers; the system was not affected by the differences in the personalities and skills of teachers; it required a smaller number of textbooks. Most of all, it got around the so- called “damaged culture” of the Filipino as cited by James Fallowsi --the culture of pwede na 'yan, of receiving handouts and being dependent on others, our slanted understanding of honesty, and our skewed concept of time and discipline.

In short, DLP turned out to be a program which was suitable for Philippine context. It modeled a culture of excellence and hard work and it taught the students to learn how to learn.

THE RESULTS

Things began to look up. After eight years of trying without any passers-- students passed the UP College Admission Test three years in a row: six passed in 2005, five in 2004, and four in 2003.

Then, in the Mathematical Challenge for Filipino Kids Training Program conducted by the Mathematics Trainers Guild (MTG) of the Philippines, the number of CVIF qualifiers rose from one to ten since 2002-with two of them ranking second and third overall, outranking their counterparts from Tagbilaran City.

Educators from all over the country including Poveda, De La Salle and Immaculate Conception Academy have visited the school to look at the system.