Start of a new life, eh?

Starting Monday next week I will be embarking on a major undertaking which would occupy me for the next four years. I hope to be able to finish it in that time span.

I realized that I need some drastic changes in my prioritization. These online activities like blogging (as if I always do blog :)) would have to take a much smaller slice of my time. I still have to see though. I might or might not be able to continue doing this now and then, but definitely I have to focus on that endeavor.

Since my studies in computer usually takes up most of my time otherwise not devoted to my professional growth, family and the Cebu Provincial History Project (as if I devote much time to it :)), I have to let go of many stuff: computer programming (goodbye PHP and MySQL, although as a matter of honor I have to finish iGrade, which I envision to take over the grade management in our school), automated data collection (haha, now you know why the bandwidth expense in your servers), EduPhil.org.

Also, I could not attend any more the monthly meetings of the not-yet-organized Cebu Science and Mathematics Teachers Association (CSMTA).

Okay, now I have to go :)

Cooperative seminar

We had a cooperative pre-membership seminar at school this afternoon. It has been some time since the administration had wanted to hold this seminar so that the cooperative which (I was informed) existed right before I was accepted as a faculty member back in S.Y. 2005-2006 could become legitimate and accredited with the Cooperative Development Authority.

Starting this January I had been running a sort of a "savings association" for the school's employees; I describe the system extensively at EduPhil.org. Currently the total capitalization is at PHP 56,600.00, cash on hand is PHP 8,098.50, and the expected income is PHP 5,638.18. With a total "points" of 5,019 in the system (please see the description for a better understanding of these "points"), the return per point is PHP 1.12. Not bad. The highest capitalist, with a capital of PHP 9,000.00, will have an additional PHP 856.80 at the end of the year (if today was the end of the year, or December 10 in our reckoning). [Note: The amount of points would actually increase if there is fresh capital infused into the system, while the income would only increase if there are additional loans, so the actual return per point may decrease.]

I realized from the seminar that Congress had just passed last February 17, 2009 a new Cooperative Code of the Philippines, Republic Act No. 9520. (The law is so new that LawPhil.net does not have it yet in its database.)

The person who conducted the seminar provided the following cooperative principles:
1. Voluntary and open membership
2. Democratic member control: secret balloting, no proxy voting, no nomination/voting for absent members, 1 member 1 vote
3. Member economic participation
4. Autonomy and independence
5. Education, training and information
6. Cooperation among cooperatives
7. Concern for community

Visayas Professional Educators' Forum first consultative assembly

I wrote this while waiting for the first consultative forum of the Visayas Professional Educators' Forum at the University of San Carlos CPA Review Center. (Of course, I expected to be only able to post this later this afternoon, or may be even tomorrow, since I don't have an Internet connection from here. EDIT: I was able to upload this in the evening. :))

PAREF Springdale allowed me to attend this conference. I paid the PHP 250.00 registration fee myself as a counterpart. In any case, this seems to be a conference for teachers.

I have the organization's rationale paper, which gives me an idea to distribute something similar during the launching and first organizational meeting of the proposed Cebu Science and Math Teachers Association this May 23, 2009, 6-8 PM, at the BRIGHT Academy AVR, Banilad, Cebu City. The objectives of the Visayas Professional Educators' Forum, as stated in their rationale paper, focus on the welfare of teachers, one of my causes. I'm really excited with the fifth objective of the VPEF, which is "[t]o link up with networks of educators' organizations existing inside and outside of the country which share our common issues and concerns." This is where CSMTA could enter, since definitely there are overlapping of concerns here. Dennis Albiso, a member of the Education in the Philippines Forum (EduPhil.org) and one of those who had expressed willingness to join the CSMTA, has communicated to me the need to include in CSMTA's goals the protection of individual members from harassment. While not fully supporting the move in the context of CSMTA (I could not, as an organizer, since my main concern is to organize the group, some members of which may not feel comfortable with such a move), I am fully for it, as an individual.

Anyway, back to VPEF. As the organizers envision it, VPEF will be a sort of an umbrella organization. Only school-based employees' organizations could become member of VPEF, so CSMTA is out. (EDIT: In the afternoon, they decided to allow individuals to become members of the VPEF.) But I really like the "little print": "The VEPF is neither a Labor Federation nor a party-list group. It shall respect the organizational integrity of each member-organization. Funding and expenses are decided by each organization in accordance with its own Constitution and by-laws."

I'll try to see what would come out of this meeting. My laptop is running low on battery. :)

Gregorio Rubio of Daanbantayan

Mr. Gregorio Rubio is the Municipal Tourism Officer of Daanbantayan, Cebu.

There. Thanks to those who had searched for this info. :)

Cebu Provincial History Project nearing completion

A few months from now, Cebuanos in particular and Filipinos in general will have a taste of a unique historical dalit: 55 volumes detailing the history of the towns and cities of the province of Cebu, as well as the provincial capitol and the province itself. I am not sure if this is the first time this was done on such a scale in the entire history of the Philippines, but surely I haven't heard of anything like it before. Imagine a local government unit (the provincial government of Cebu in this case) commissioning a write up of the local histories of its towns and cities. This is indeed a giant step for Philippine history writing and scholarship, specifically local history. And there can be no real national history until the histories of each locality are written and interwoven into the national saga.

Anyway, I'm proud to be part of the team. I was assigned to write the history of Daanbantayan, Cebu, the northernmost town of the island province. I was not born in Daanbantayan; my original preference for the assignment were either Daanbantayan (where I grew up) and Sogod (where I was actually born and my referent when I say "I'm going to the province" nowadays). I stayed in Daanbantayan from around 1986, when my mother got a job as a public school teacher at the Daanbantayan National High School (she has already retired) to 2001, when I graduated from high school and started with my college schooling. I'm almost done writing the 80-thousand-word history of the town.

I'm also proud to say that I seem to be the youngest member of the entire writing team. I'll be turning 26 this August (okay, that is not so young, but still...). I must get a certification to this effect from Mr. Laureen Ligaton, the secretary of the project.

The project is being coordinated by the University of San Carlos, via Mr. Rene Alburo of the Social Science Research Center, but it is really a joint effort of the entire Cebuano academic community: you have such names as Dr. Madrilena de la Cerna of the Central Visayas Studies Center of University of the Philippines in the Visayas - Cebu Campus; Dr. Romola O. Savellon of the Cebu Normal University Museum; Dr. Erlinda Alburo of the Cebuano Studies Center, USC; Mr. Jose Eleazar Bersales of the USC Department of Sociology and Anthropology; and Dr. Jocelyn Gera of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. These are the editors for the town clustering scheme that the project management devised. (Daanbantayan belonged to Cluster 3 under Dr. Savellon.)

The writers are also of a varied sort - you have for example, Mr. Dionisio Sy, writer for Cebu City, who had already written a short history of the city before, and whose work is a required reading for everyone else. He was summoned from his retirement, along with Dr. Resil Mojares, formerly of the Cebuano Studies Center, the most erudite of the local historians here. He is set to write the definitive history of the province itself. Messrs. Bong Wenceslao, Anol Mongaya, and Godo Roferos of SunStar Cebu are also in the writing team. Sir Godo is with our cluster. Also in our cluster is the head of the social studies department of the Sacred Heart School - Jesuits. (OK, yours truly is proud to say that he is the head of the... math department of PAREF Springdale School, Cebu. Figure it out.)

The writing team is helped by a formidable research team composed of known names in Cebu scholarship in anthropology and history. You have Mr. Dale Mansueto, for example.

The project was started in 2007. The contract stated that I was supposed to submit the completed manuscript on or before December 31, 2008, but then again, punctuality had never been a virtue of islesv. (I reasoned that nothing very bad could really happen to me if I don't finish the book in time. What, they would send me to jail? The more that the book won't be finished :). The best that they could do would be to withhold the payments to me, but then again, I am really receiving a competitive salary from PAREF Springdale School.)

In fairness to the entire team, though, writing a local history is not that easy. To a certain extent, I am luckier, that the present officials of Daanbantayan were cooperative, and that the officials in the olden times were foresighted enough to make sure that certain documents survive. I haven't even started really mining the content of the Sangguniang Bayan archive. In my researches at Daanbantayan, I was helped immensely by Mrs. Monalisa Ancao, the SB Secretary; Mr. Gregorio Rubio, the Municipal Tourism Officer, and a good friend (formerly) of my Ate Gracel; Engr. Dale of the Municipal Planning and Development Office, who was a neighbor at Solid Homes, Daanbantayan; and of course, the son-mother team of Mayor Sun Shimura and former mayor now vice-mayor Malou Loot (OK, the help of the last two was more symbolic than practical, but I could not have utilized the resources of the municipal building without their go signal). Outside the municipal hall, I can cite particularly former vice-mayor Mariano 'Nieve' Diaz; Barangay Captain Eli Abucay of Maya; former municipal councilor and now Barangay Captain Rex Novabos of Logon; and the other barangay captains of the different barangays, whom I bothered in their non-official times just to ask a few questions and request certain documents. Special mention should go to Councilor Lemuel Dano of Logon, who allowed me to enjoy my birthday last year at the pristine Malapascua Island, at the same time that I was researching the history of the island. One of these days I'm going to repay that kindness by writing a history of that beautiful island (I already have some materials :)).

So here we are, almost done. Wait, I'm supposed to be spending my time polishing Chapter 4, not writing blog entries...

Vampirism in the Philippines

I'm working on a novel in English which deals with vampirism in the Philippines. In the book Tabunan: The Untold Exploits of the Famed Cebuano Guerillas in World War II by Manuel F. Segura (Cebu City: MF Segura Publications, 1975), the retired colonel described the capture and death of Felixberto Lopez, who was accused as a Japanese spy (pp. 214-218). Here is the interesting part (pp. 217-218):

"On the beach at Calawisan, they took no chances on the legend that he would live again like the ubi when thrown to the ground. They dug three deep holes far apart from each other. They cut off his head, disembowelled his body, cut out his heart, his liver, kidneys and intestines and chopped them up into small pieces. They buried the head away from the body in the first hole, the torso in the next hole, and the chopped entrails in the third.

Such was the death of Felixberto Lopez, notorious Japanese undercover agent.

He was never seen alive again."

But of course, they were wrong. I'm writing a novel on vampires.

(Note: Candido Wenceslao wrote an eight-part series on the liberation of Cebu. Some parts are from Col. Segura's book.)

Cebu Science and Mathematics Teachers Association

I am collaborating with some people to organize science and math teachers from the city and province of Cebu into one cohesive body, the Cebu Science and Mathematics Teachers Association. That is still a tentative name; a different name may be opted by the organization this May 23.

Birth of the Idea
The idea started with a meeting of the graduates of the University of San Carlos Science and Mathematics Education Department (USC-SMED), more colloquially known as the double-majors, last April 4, 2009, at PAREF Springdale School. There were 29 attendees, including myself. On April 16, 2009, another meeting was conducted at AA's BBQ at Salinas Drive, Lahug, with 6 people attending: Mr. Alvin Cuandot, then head of the science department of PAREF Springdale School; Miss Sheila Milan, freelance tutor; Miss Manilyn Piloton, formerly of Bethany School and now studying for a masters in science teaching; Mr. Glenn Nigel Javier, formerly of PAREF Springdale School and now studying for a masters in math teaching; Mr. Jo Alton Narca; and me. I suggested adoption of the name, and a prepared constitution and by-laws which I patterned closely after the defunct Carolinian Science and Mathematics Education Department Alumni Association (CSMEDAA) - I originally wanted to revive CSMEDAA but I realized that there are some people more suited for that job.

May 23 Meeting
The meeting was also a coordinators' meeting for our planned monthly meetings. This month, we hope to hold a panel followed by an open forum on investigatory projects in the high school. Mr. Mart Maravillas, himself a graduate from USC-SMED, who is the science coordinator of Bright Academy will try to see today if the administration of their school is amenable to the idea. The activity will be on May 23 (that is a Saturday), 6-8 P.M. (Activities are set regularly every third Saturday of the month, 6-8 P.M. There are already set activities for June up to August. I'll post them here soon.)

Here is the news item which will be released to the press (still subject to the agreement of the Bright Academy administration):

The Science Department of BRIGHT Academy, the school with a heart, invites all science and mathematics teachers from the city and province of Cebu for a down-to-earth, "real"-teachers conference on investigatory projects this May 23, 2009 (Saturday), 6-8pm, at BRIGHT Academy, Banilad, Cebu City. The free conference, titled "Investigatory Project in the High School Curriculum: The Whys and the Hows" will feature teachers who are "in the field": Ms. Manilyn Piloton, formerly of Bethany School; Mr. Patrick Alinsonorin, USC South Campus Basic Education Department; and Mr. Mart Andrew Maravillas, head of Science Department, BRIGHT Academy. The goals of the conference are: 1.) to agree on a common format for the investigatory project; and 2.) to plan for a projected grassroots student science congress this September 2009. The conference will conclude with an organizational meeting for a projected Cebu Science
and Math Teachers Association (CSMTA) for those interested.

For confirmation of attendance and other concerns, please don't hesitate to contact Vincent Isles, PAREF Springdale School, Lahug, Cebu City via landline number 232-2220, mobile 0927-829-6000/0922-829-6001 or email islesv@gmail.com. Particulars of the conference can also be found at the Education in the Philippines Forum at http://eduphil.org/

At the last 30 minutes of the activity, we expect to meet with those who are interested to become core members of the CSMTA. At this stage of the organization, volunteers would be appreciated; surely we can understand those who would not be willing to start working on a starting organization. It is usually the most difficult years, when procedures are still being worked out.

The CSMTA Dream
Or at least the islesv dream for CSMTA. I will be presenting this idea of what I hope CSMTA to be, but I'm not going to cry if they are not carried by the body.

We hope to be able to have as members a majority of the science and mathematics teachers from the city and province of Cebu. We hope to gather enough strength and influence to be able to effect positive changes in the areas of science and math curriculum, instruction, and teacher training. This strength and influence will come from a reputation of providing relevant, cost-effective and regular inputs (seminars, workshops, forums, panels) to science and math teachers.

How would CSMTA differ from already existing groups? (Because, if it is no different at all, I might as well spend my time blogging and forget about the entire business of trying to set up an organization.) We will focus on the provision of RCER inputs - relevant, cost-effective and regular.

Relevancy is immediate usefulness to teachers, thus inputs are to be conducted only via consultation with teachers (what do they need at this particular time?). This does not mean that we would not take advantage of some opportunities, for example the presence in the city of an expert on a topic which may not be immediately useful to the members but which is useful to them nonetheless, perhaps in the future.

Cost-effectiveness would mean minimum charge for inputs, if at all there are charges. Perhaps a membership fee should be collected, but this should be one time (annual), and it has its purposes also: the one-time payment would make a member be conscious of his membership. But as much as possible, the seminars should be free, or if there is a charge, it should be very minimal. The word "minimal" must be defined by the membership, but the guiding idea is to ask: Would asking for a seminar fee prohibit any member from attending the seminar? If the answer is positive, then the seminar fee must be reconsidered.

How would it be possible to provide cost-effective seminars? Here are some ideas:

1. Utilize local experts. I have experienced many times where a Manila-based expert is invited for a one-day seminar and paid a handsome sum for his trouble (aside from the hotel accomodations and the flight expenses) when a local expert could have presented the same thing for a fraction of the cost.

2. Get the venue for free. Teachers have their schools. The support of the administration of each school must be obtained so that the organization may be allowed to use the school as a venue. There is no need for airconditioned venues. Instead of a PowerPoint presentation, a one-page outline of the talk/lecture can be provided. On the other hand, there is really no need to provide full-text copies of talks/lectures, unless someone requests for it. In that case, the request can be noted, the requester asked to pay for the photocopy, and the copy provided the next meeting (anyway the meeting is monthly).

3. Minimize on the bring homes. How useful are souvenir bags from seminars? Have you really used what you received the last time you've attended a seminar? Most of the time these bags act simply as advertisements for the organization sponsoring the seminar. If they are advertisements, why should the attendees pay for them?

4. Don't provide snacks. This is one of the reason why we've decided earlier on to hold meetings from 6-8 P.M. The effective length of inputs is just actually 1 hour and 30 minutes. By around 7:30, most of the attendees would already be hungry. It is already time to end the input then; the remaining 30 minutes is for the organizers to clean up and do other administrative tasks. (Organizers may be provided snacks, but it should be after the meeting.)

5. Get sponsorships. Once the membership base is larger, we can ask some commercial companies for sponsorships in exchange for subtle advertising.

Other ways of minimizing costs can be considered. Raising funds from members should be kept to a minimum.

Finally, CSMTA hopes to provide regular inputs to its members. Have you noticed that some of these national professional organizations only remember you when it is time for the national convention? (If you are thinking that they remember you out of courtesy because they want you to attend the national convention - after all you are a member - you are only half right: they also want you to attend since your convention fee would partly subsidize the cost.)

We hope to have one activity at least every month. In this way, the membership is kept updated of new developments, esp. those useful for their daily lives as teachers. The organizational staff is also kept updated of the needs of the members.

Invitation
For those who are from around Cebu and interested in joining the Cebu Science and Mathematics Association (CSMTA), please attend the meeting this May 23, 2009 (Saturday), 6-8 P.M. If you can't attend the meeting but interested in joining, please text or call me at 0922-829-6001 or landline (032) 232-2220 (look for Mr. Isles; ask to be connected to the high school) or email islesv@gmail.com

You can download a copy of the proposed Constitution and By-Laws.