New Pastoral Challenge

After being involved with the education ministry for the past four months, I am even more convinced that the church and the whole pastoral ministry is faced with a new challenge especially in educating the new generation of young people in our church.

I have always believed that in order to effectively educate and minister our youth today, we need to learn how teachers teach, as well as how learners learn.  I believe this concept is key to effectively present the gospel to the ever changing young people.  Youth culture is actively changing as the world continues to gear itself towards globalization and internationalization.

Philippine education has not defined a standard of pedagogy for all schools to follow.  For years, each school is uniquely implementing a pedagogy that suits their needs and preference.  This is already a big challenge for us.

Because of this challenge, I have always asked youth pastors to assess the youth's learning style to effectively present the gospel to them.  And the best way to do this is to identify where majority of our youth is enrolled, and identify the pedagogy of such school.  Since the youth is quite familiar with their school's pedagogy because this is how they are being taught and educated, using the same pedagogy would help them learn faster.

And now the bigger challenge would be the UBD.  UBD or Understanding By Design is not a new pedagogy but a new strategy to be used with the preferred pedagogy in order to effect learning of our young people.  The Department of Education has issued for its full implementation for all first year high school curriculum this coming school year.  UBD is to be match with DI or Differentiated Instruction.  Woo!  This would even make teaching more complicated for pastors.

So, what is UBD and DI?  UBD offers a three-stage, backward design process to assist teachers in centering their curriculum and assessments on big ideas, essential questions, and authentic performances (1).  DI is to recognize students varying background and knowledge, readiness, language, preferences in learning, interest; and to react responsively.  DI is a process to approach teaching and learning for students of differing abilities in the same class.  The intent of DI is to maximize each student's growth and individual success by meeting each student where he or she is and assisting in the learning process.  (2)

As I went through the seminar of UBD and DI last week, I felt this would really be hard work but very beneficial.  UBD is understanding understanding.  It is really understanding how our youth learn, providing the "big idea" that would make learning of new things relevant not just in one aspect of life but in all aspects of life; it is a multi-application learning, I supposed.  We all have been wanting to make the Bible and Christ relevant in our congregation's life, and UBD and DI can be key to this desire.  This is what all pastors are longing for... APPLICATION of what we have been teaching and preaching!!!

This new strategy is hard work.  Unless we catch up to the latest trends on how our young people are learning today, it would be more and more difficult for them to accept the gospel because relevance is their learning key today.  Unless we make the gospel relevant, they will have difficulty in accepting the teaching of the Scripture.  We need to see the Big Idea in each passage we preach (UBD) and usher them to the Big Idea through teaching methodologies that are relevant to their individual learning style (DI).  

I am not discounting the work of the Holy Spirit, but as they say, "the methods change but the Scripture remains the same."  The world has changed and has continued to change.  Too much noise are trying to get the attention of our youth today, unless you and I hit hard on how they learn today, the Scripture would become irrelevant to them.

This summer, all schools would be geared towards educating teachers on UBD and DI.  I hope we would have the determination and hitch on their faculty training as an initial step of making the gospel relevant to today's youth by learning UBD and DI.

1 http://www.ascd.org/research_a_topic/Understanding_by_Design.aspx
2 http://www.cast.org/publications/ncac/ncac_diffinstruc.html

Makati Hope!!! The BEST!

Today, is the start of our three-day Understanding by Design (UBD) Seminar sponsored by Financial Assistance for Private Education (FAPE) in Manila Hotel.  Ms. Aggabao and I are attending this seminar.  UBD is the education strategy being pushed by the Department of Education ordering all schools in our country to implement UBD this coming school year for all first year high school curriculum (High 1 only).

Fortunately, through the academic leadership of Dr. Tiu and Ms. Aggabao (our Academic Head), our school has been implementing the UBD for the last two years, not only for first year high school curriculum but in all levels from Grade 1 to High 4, and this is being done in all subject areas.  We are more advance actually than the rest of the schools in our country today.

I was able to talk to the speaker, Dr. Jeanne Vantour from the United States to help critic our school's work.   This afternoon, some of our coordinators were able to bring our curriculum maps and lesson plans to Manila Hotel.  We sat down to discuss with the speaker.  The speaker gave her suggestions on how to improve what we have done but according to her, they are very minor.

Dr. Vantour was very very impressed with all praises and highly commends the work done by our faculty.  I quote, "what you have done is even better than many schools in the United States," "your school should be a model for other schools in the Philippines to follow," "I will endorse this," and "your work might be able to help the Department of Education set the standards for UBD in the Philippines."

Let us continue to pray for our school as we further develop and improve our curriculum.  If the Lord is willing, this might be a big contribution to the present Philippine Education.

To God be all the glory!!!