Globe has tapped non-profit groups Habi Education Lab and Teach for the Philippines (TFP) to create educational materials designed to further enhance the skills of public school teachers especially on digital learning.
Habi, a partner of Globe for three years now, collaborates with various organizations within and outside the education sector to build workshops, curricula, learning resources, programs, and platforms that improve how people learn. Award-winning TFP, on the other hand, works to provide Filipino children with an inclusive, relevant, and excellent education.
The partnerships with Habi and TFP is part of Globe’s Global Filipino Teachers (GFT) Program which, for this school year, is focused on supporting public school teachers with the shift to remote and distance learning, As a systems-strengthening program, the GFT learning goals are aligned with DepEd’s Learning Continuity Plan and Professional Development priorities.
“Globe is one with DepEd in upskilling public school teachers to keep up with the demands of the school year in this new normal. And through our partnerships with training institutions and professional organizations, we hope to do our part in preparing our teachers for 21st century learning,” said Yoly Crisanto, SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer of Globe.
Together with Globe, Habi has created a six-part learning series which includes a blend of live sessions streamed on Facebook and downloadable self-paced materials for teachers to apply into practice. The sessions are all relevant to the new learning delivery modalities of DepEd and are focused on helping teachers reflect and analyze their own strengths, gaining empathy for learners, building well-designed lessons, providing best practices in using digital learning resources, and identifying ways to continue practicing learning experience design.
“We believe in the creativity and talents of teachers. But in order to maximize technology, they have to believe in themselves first. Throughout the pandemic, more and more teachers are getting tired from all the expectations and responsibilities that were brought on by remote learning, so we started our webinar series with reflections and confidence-building activities. We wanted to introduce new possibilities of teaching with technology, while still keeping them within a place where they can thrive,” said Gerson Abesamis, Learning Experience Designer + Executive Director of Habi Education Lab.
Similar to Habi, TFP assists in ensuring learning continuity among public school students by equipping teachers and school leaders with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to overcome the challenges posed by an unprecedented school year mired by a global pandemic.
“Teachers make the success of our students’ development possible. Especially now, our teachers, along with parents and guardians, have become frontliners in education. Together, they are leading the charge in ensuring that our students continue to learn, despite the challenges brought about by distance learning. It is incumbent upon us to equip our frontliners with as much support as we can provide,” said Angel Ramos, Marketing and Events Director of TFP.
In the case of Teach for the Philippines’ partnership with Globe Telecom, Habi Education Lab, and the National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP), the work dedicated to ensuring our children succeed at life comes in the form of providing learning opportunities that provide innovative approaches to teaching and partnership-building for the professional development of our public school teachers.
Under the GFT program, TFP provides essential sessions on two key pillars – developing early language literacy, and teacher-parent engagement in distance education. For early language literacy, TFP helps teachers apply suggested techniques and approaches in preparing instructional materials for teaching reading in the context of distance learning. At the same time, TFP guides the teachers in understanding the perspectives and circumstances of parents or guardians in order to create an operational plan for home-school partnership engagement to make sure that distance education would succeed.
The initiatives with Habi and GFT is part of Globe advocacy to help the education sector through connectivity and learning tools and materials. The company is also committed to supporting 10 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals including UNSDG No. 4 on the provision of quality education and UNSDG No. 17 on Partnership for the Goals.