Serving the Lord with Joy!!!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Life's a Cube!


It was the great Philosopher Socrates who once said, “ Unexamined life is not worth living.”

Many people nowadays are living a shallow, empty, unrewarded and meaningless life which can be traced to a low self- esteem, poor and defeated view of themselves. So it is imperative that they examine their own lives for them to live their lives to the fullest.

One way of knowing one’s self is to employ tool that interests us. For the the purpose of seeing one's self and at the same time the object of reflection, we use the Rubik’s cube, the most popular puzzle toy in the world. The process of solving the cube using algorithm can also be used as process of gradually discovering ourselves. We all know that change is gradual, step by step, little by little, brick by brick. This is what I am going to present to my students to discover themselves in a new perspective since they are much interested to play with this toy. I believe that by spiritualizing the cube—solving the puzzle—they may be able to put Christ at the center of their lives.


1. There are various approaches in putting the different colors together on each side of the cube. One of the ways I’ve learned is to start with the cross forming it at the down face of the cube.




Lesson:

The cross represents Jesus. It is through the cross that Christ saved us. And if we want to put order to our chaotic life, we must put Jesus at the center of it.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.( I Corinthians 1:18)
2. After making the cross, we should again perform some twists and turns for the various colors to gradually put them together on the cube’s first layer. While in the process of doing it, the cross at the bottom disappears and that face becomes complete and the first layer is also done.





Lesson:

If we wanted to effect change in our life, we have to make the necessary twists/turns. The twists and turns are the things we do to improve the different aspects of our life. The aspects of spirituality, community, academic, personality, relationship and social life need to have an equal attention. Some areas need 45 degree turn; other areas need 90 or 180 degree turn. We cannot just focus on one area and expect other areas to grow by themselves. Turn to Jesus and He will gradually change the circumstances in every aspect of your life in your favor.

3. The next step is to make the right moves to fix the second layer of the cube.


Lesson:

Change will not happen overnight, it takes time to mature physically, spiritually, morally. We need to have determination, courage, and the backbone to transform our lives. We may make mistakes and wrong decisions but God is willing to forgive us if we ask for it, then we keep on moving forward thinking that God is always with us in our journey.

4. If you're done, the next is forming a cross again at the upper face of the cube. We may encounter the figure of a tank or fish while making the twists and turns. We can turn the tank figure into a cross or fish to complete the upper face.

Lesson:

Another twists and turns are to be made to better achieve our goal and to see great improvement in our life. We have to be consistent, determined and focused. We may face failures, discouragement, and pressures along the way but we trust God’s words. We put the figure of the cross again at the center of our life.

Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 22:15)

The tank figure can be understood as problems, frustrations, disappointments but we can offer all of these to Jesus. He will turn our sorrows into joy, sadness to gladness, and poverty to prosperity.

5. To complete the process of solving the cube we make the last steps towards achieving the goal of putting each color together on each face of the cube.

Lesson:

We should continue believing what God can do to our life. Even though we make mistakes, we backslide, we can easily return to his loving arms if we choose to.

So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in
in God that it will happen just as he told me.

Acts 27:25


Shared by Raul Paras during the
Seminar on Innovative Teaching Strategies

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

LEAP LS 305
(Lasallian Education Assistance Program)




INTRODUCTION


As I observed my LS 305 students during the first quarter of school year 2008-2009, I noticed that while some of them are achievers, a number of them seemed academically challenged. In fact, at the end of the first quarter—students incurred failure in subjects such as Social Studies, Filipino, and Math.
Driven by the example of St. John Baptist De La Salle of helping academically challenged children to excel by providing quality education, I was motivated to conceptualize a similar endeavor—a homeroom based program which will respond to the need of the Level 9 students especially in class LS 305 to do well in their academic performance since this year is the most difficult period for them due to moral, physical, and social development and personal issues they need to deal with.
The program is called LEAP which stands for Lasallian Education Assistance Program. This is intended to motivate students to “leap” higher from where they were previously in their academic performance. Likewise, the said program aims to achieve the following objectives:



1. to assist the academically challenged students in their daily assignments and other academic requirements
2. to provide opportunity for the achieving students to share their time and skills in helping academically challenged classmates
3. to build school environment that fosters academic excellence
4. to instill in them the value of being a sharer of God’s gift and the importance of helping one another in the class
5. to achieve 100 percent passing rate for all students in the class at the end of S.Y. 2008-2009

Methodology

The Adviser, together with the class officers, brainstormed and put their ideas together to design a program, and then the program was presented to the class, who in turn gave positive feedbacks about its details. To ensure the smooth implementation of LEAP, the following procedure were set and presented to the class.
The adviser informed everyone in the class especially the students with failures to attend the said sessions.
There were at least 3 review sessions a week held in LS 305.
The subjects to be reviewed for the day were determined by the class.
A minimum of 30 minutes was allotted for each session that starts at 12:10 to 12:40.


The student who is the best in the each subject area facilitated the review session. The adviser and the class officers took turns in monitoring each review session.
The Adviser informed the subject teachers about the program so that they could help in providing feedbacks on the students’ performance in their subject.

RESULTS

The first and second quarter grades of academically challenged students in Math, Filipino, and Social Studies are presented in Table 1.

Table1 Comparison of the 1st and 2nd Quarter grades of LS 305 students with failures



-------------------------------Math --------Filipino ----------Social Studies
Names -----------------------1st -2nd -------1st 2nd -------------1st --2nd
1 Student 1-------------- -------------------------------------------73 --76
2 Student 2---------------------------------------------------------73 --78
3 Student 3--------------- ------------------------------------------73 --78
4 Student 4---------------------------------------------------------73 --79
5 Student 5----------------------------------------------------------73 --76
6 Student 6------------ ------73-- 78 ----------74 --75 ----------73 --77
7 Student 7-------------------74---75 ----------74 --79 ----------73---77

Table 2

------------------------------------------MATH-------- Social Studies
-----------Names----------------------1st-------2nd-----1st-----2nd
1 Dimaano, Dane Kezia D. ----------92-------95-------83------85
2 Fesalvo, Milca T. -------------------85-------84-------86------90
3 Hernandez, Joanna ----------------86-------87-------82------86
4 Lasig, Pamela O. -------------------83-------89--------81------85
5 Leycano, Dane Aira D. -------------88------93-------82--------87
6 Sangalang, Joyce Ann M. ----------87------92------81-------87
7 Jaurigue, Inaki ---------------------93-------96-------86------83


The tables show that the academically-challenged students’ grades in the three identified subjects have tremendously improved since they started to attend the program regularly and the failures in the first quarter were eliminated totally in the second quarter. Likewise, the grades of achieving students who facilitated the review session for each subject showed a great improvement.

However, some students in my class incurred failing grades in other subjects due to the following factors: neglect of students in passing the requirements and too many activities in one particular subject.


DISCUSSION

Based on the data presented, it could be said that indeed, the program that was monitored effectively by the teacher and the class officers resulted in the improvement of academic performance of both the academically challenged and achieving students in class LS 305. The determination of the students to excel in academics and their positive attitudes contributed to the success of the program. Other positive factors should be identified so that they can be used to improve the said program.

However, there is a need to look into the grading system, the academic policy of not releasing the grades of students with failures week after a quarterly examinations, and the requirements of some subjects as factors for getting a lower grades or failures of many students. The need to identify the negative factors would be very essential in modifying the academic policy in order to address the situation of the academically challenged students in the Integrated School.

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