Before I left, I read about a country that has really been through it. Ranked first among 193 countries in the WorldRiskIndex for disaster risk, ruled by Spain for three centuries, and then by the United States until 1946, the Philippines has weathered more than its share. I let that reading do my planning for me, and I assumed I would walk into classrooms defined by making do. That assumption turned into a question: "What can the creativity and resourcefulness of Filipino science teachers reveal about making science inclusive and engaging for all learners?" This question assumed a lack of resources would drive creativity and, well, I was wrong.
At our partner school, De La Salle Lipa in Lipa City, Batangas, I watched a 9th-grade science teacher run a DNA extraction lab. Kids brought in fruit from home, mashed it up, added some chemicals, and watched the DNA from within the cells separate; the same procedure, same materials, and same results I'd gotten a couple years earlier with my eighth graders. What changed was everything the students heard before anyone touched the fruit. The team at DLSL uses the GRASPS acronym to position their students in real-world situations, and that day, they were agricultural scientists advising local farmers on which fruits were worth breeding. Nothing on the lab bench was unusual, and everything built around it was deliberate.
Once I stopped looking for scarcity, I saw this pattern everywhere. So, in looking back, I think the better question to answer would be,
"What do Filipino educators teach on purpose that many of us leave to chance?"
Every classroom teaches lessons that never appear in the plan; the difference I kept noticing was whether anyone bothered to say them out loud.
In sixth-grade robotics, my partner teacher showed a video retelling of the parable of the wise and foolish builders before students built their first circuits. At a Lasallian school, the scripture comes easily, but the move underneath it works without it. She named the values she wanted in the room, hard work and bayanihan, before she even taught them about content. Our rooms have values too, so why don't we announce them?
Across all classes, I saw structures that instilled respect while still carrying warmth. Students used honorifics like "Miss" and "Sir" but attached them to teachers' first names. Every teacher was required to lead a club so they could get to know their students holistically. CAPSTONE projects from fourth through twelfth grade had students apply an academic approach to community issues. The system had multiple opportunities for students to feel safe and connected with the adults around them, rather than just the one class they shared. At Banjo Laurel National High School, a public campus working with a very different budget, the same idea showed up on the schedule. Twelve students spent a period asking three American teachers what school is really like where we come from, and the questions weren't soft ones. Their school had given them protected time for this, and had decided that student questions deserved serious adult answers.
No system is perfect, and I tell my students all the time that the goal is just to be a little better than we were yesterday. These are easy but powerful shifts we can bring back to our classrooms in the U.S. Before we co-create our class charter this year, I'll read my students the story of bayanihan, where neighbors lift an entire house onto bamboo poles and carry it down the road together. When we do our labs, I'm excited to use the GRASPS acronym to give them deeper meaning. When I meet with our advisory planning committee, I'll float the idea of a year-long CAPSTONE project where students can identify and improve issues in our community.
Though the fellowship is formally ending, I don't think the collaboration ends here. We all swapped contacts at our farewell sendoff, and I'm excited to follow up with the teachers about the questions I never got to ask. Who decided on these structures in the first place? Are there planning committees that keep them alive? And what do teachers trade away to keep them running?
When I set up my next lab, I'll be looking at the same equipment my friends across the ocean use, and I'll be thinking a lot harder about what my students hear before they touch it.