Jonah Galupo (2011)

Pondering quietly at the veranda of the Adagi Balay, Ma’am Jonah speaks about her appreciation of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).

Ma’am Jonah Galupo has been with us for six months.  She is coming from a history of teaching in a public school in Iligan City (1971-77).  In the 1980s, she transferred to private schools to teach high school and college students.

Later in 2008-09, she volunteered as a teachers’ trainer at the Training Institute of Teachers’ Education in Pakistan.  In her more than 15 years of experience in teaching, she is used to having materials and set guidelines to follow.  Lesson plans are set while learning materials are readily available.

Now, as she works with APC, she humbly admits the struggle in not having lessons in place.  Visual aids have to be searched for and often need to be drawn from the life around.  Her experience gives her new learnings and she realizes the value of using mother tongue as a mode of teaching.  She says:

“With MTB-MLE, teaching non-readers is easy.  They very quickly all become readers. I appreciate MLE now.  I see the children are better and are able to understand lessons.  I think it is true about mother tongue being taken first as students can easily make sentences and describe pictures.”

Ma’am Jonah is not only committed to teach the Pulangiyen, but more importantly, she is willing to learn and embrace this new culture she is living with.