Swimming Between Islands

For David Toze: Tell me who you are

I.

The places I love most, few tourists ever see or know about. They are far away places, not always reached by traveling lonely, forgotten roads, but places inhabited by a different sort of life, often fixed in tradition. Those who know them whisper stories to the outside world, but otherwise, they are often overlooked, or few go through the expected trouble to visit. Those who do are rewarded. As a rule, if you are a foreigner here, they will be kind. Make an effort to learn a bit of the language, and you’ll find such travel not too difficult at all. As for those who make a habit of such journeys, I hope we can always appreciate the unique beauty each new destination has to offer, because without the joy of discovery, or even revisiting with a new perspective, what joy can there be at all?

Some thirty hours by connecting flights from Washington D.C., Jakarta, where I live, is a convoluted crusting of skyscrapers and malls, slums and festering canals. Like the pungent smell of fermented fruit, it requires a particular taste to appreciate. There is little you wouldn’t find here in the way of commerce, and, for an expatriate, the cost of living is startlingly cheap. You learn to ignore the mixture of exhaust that coats everything, and the streets are crowded. People from all over the islands come searching for a richer life. For me, the village is where I’d be happiest, a small, seaside fishing town, lapped to sleep by the sound of the waves, coaxing gently into the early morning waters for trolling.

From here, there are plenty of unfamiliar, out of the way places easily reached by wheels or air. Banda Aceh, for example, is just another hour north by plane. Outsiders are uncommon, except for a few hard-core divers and some disaster relief volunteers. A tragic city, Banda Aceh, sitting on the rugged nose of Sumatra, made famous for that wave of anguish broadcast around the world.

It has been years since the city was scoured. The shattered homes and hotels, the rusted, overturned cars, and the churned bodies have all been swept up and carried off. But there are still signs of its enormity, almost forgotten, on the outskirts of the renovated and renewed. Past the market stalls with sinewy beef backs hanging in the open air, and twenty minutes down a washed out road is a rusty container ship lying across a weedy pitch, three miles from the coast. Its long flat bed, faded tower, and the empty catacombs of the hull are now a playground for unwatched children and adventurous teens. It lies quietly in the overgrown grass as if this was always its maker’s true intention.

It’s unreal to imagine, tens of thousands pulled from the wreckage, half buried in mud, their stiff bodies piled high into the backs of trucks, carried off, laid into wide pits and buried again. The survivors never learn who’s where, but just come to the closest of the grassy lees whenever they feel the tug at their hearts. How had it been that day? Many must have seen it from a distance, carrying their tawny sacks of nutmeg and rice up from the docks, and on the horizon it can barely be discerned. First it is a gentle hill on a plane. As it rises, it sucks at the corners of the sea, revealing bare sand inside the seawall, or perhaps broken coral, jagged and white. It rises, curling its hood over the morning sun.

It must be terrible, the rushing awareness. Some just drop their arms and stare, but most run, maybe scrambling to the top of a coastal palm. Some seek shelter in nearby buildings, yanking the door closed, barring it with their bodies. Others just dash off, not knowing where. It comes in first with white foam, rolling up the piers, thumping ships like thimbles in its caress, and doubling over, it stamps the earth. Miles away, in their homes, in their cars, they are swept off with never even a gaze. Mad, sudden, and uncaring, it runs through the streets, through the doorways, rushing over the city, returning everything to the primordial.

It doesn’t take long to explore these sites at leisure before heading on to the next destination. There is an off shore island known for its diving. The seabeds nearby are rich with underwater canyons, a volcano, and a number of wrecks. A ferry leaves in the late afternoon. On the road to the port, on the corner where the tarmac turns onto a causeway that leads out to sea, is a mosque painted cloudy white, with a chocolate kiss top and the up reaching arm of a minaret. It is one last reminder. When everything here lay splintered from back to front, this mosque alone remained perfectly intact, although stained by what the sea had passed through it. I never did see a photo, but can imagine its importance as a symbol. You can still see its tower from the causeway’s end where one waits to catch the boat.

Have I been lucky? It’s hard to say, only that anything I see or touch has an aura of mystery about it, and that I have somehow been able to pack my bags and board whatever means I may to get here, and when the call comes, I board again.

II

When you take that late ferry, there is a little place I know where you could stay; it’s not much, but if you’re looking to get away, there’s nowhere else like it. It feels great to be at sea, skipping west, and long after the old city is behind, something else begins to materialize: the sleepy, green headdress and limestone cliffs of an island peeking his forehead over the waves, backed by a curl of clouds and on either side, endless ripples dip to the horizon.

As the boat gets closer, the dock comes into view, and then the land sags with brush, bunching together to form hills. Take a four-wheel drive up the treacherous curves to the lookout, below is a forest with a stream, swollen from previous rains. Crawl through it carefully, there are no bridges or switchbacks, only steep drops down to ridges and up again. In some places the pavement has completely washed out, and wheels spin through dry sand. Cling to the ledges on sharp curves, and wale the horn to alert oncoming motorists. The brush hangs further out as the road narrows at an almost indiscernible rate, until, upon meeting an oncoming car, one must pull aside.

Park in the center of a coastal village, and although the afternoon may begin to darken, just take the path leading through the random scattering of shacks. The hillside here is dense with the insects’ buzz and the slope to the left rises to jungle; the right is a steep decline to the rocks. Night can come quickly, but don’t let that make you nervous, because there it is, reflecting its bulk against the dim sea, close to the bottom of a rocky slope, and reached by a scrambling, barely visible path. Tell your interest to the old woman draped in a headscarf. She’ll grin and hand you a key, then climb down and you can unpack. The cabin sticks from the slope like a mine entrance letting the porch jut over the water just above where the waves crash into the rocks. Its interior isn’t much: a bed with a mosquito net, a plywood table, and a simple toilet, but the hammock slanting across the porch from one corner to the other is divine. Lie there endlessly, breathing, swinging, and listening to the tides rhythmic thunder. Then go inside to sleep.

III.

If, when I wake, the white glare is streaking through the window mesh and the tattered curtain, I will slip below the mosquito net and cast a shirtless shadow in the doorway, cup my hand against the hard sun, see the channel sparkle, and across it, a smaller island. And if, with mask and snorkel, I can still stroll down those wooden steps, and down over the bulging stones, I will wade in. I know the white sand’s slant, falling away until I glide above a gathering of sea urchins blotched in neon red. There are always the reef fish: parrots, damsels, butterflies, that wind through the labyrinth, and the flaring lion is motionless in shadow, hunting, until the bottom blurs with evanescence blue-green. Long needles dart just below the surface, heralding nothingness’s seeming eternal.

If without visibility, who can tell how far? I have no idea: a meter, twenty, there are no bearings below, but above the ripples I can squint past the shimmer at my stilted hut, and it seems I’ve past the center, but far still, far to go. I can wallow, stuck in a salty surface. My hands together stretch ahead, then out, wings of an awkward angle. Knees curl and feet scissor, driving through the mist. Opaque emptiness outside, around me, and in my mind, the oncoming curve of a tiger rising in jagged dome of mouth, but I keep gliding and enter a school of tiny, blue trigger, nose down, hanging. I am to and through.

There a real shark glides, sleek, black tip on the dorsal. And then three below, roving.  Breathless, I hover in the wave. The bottom now emerges, a boulder, cinnamon-tinged. The woozy floor encrusted in rough shadow rises dimly to the light. Sunlight breaks with the waves and glitters. Each coral shape, a new city of plates, of branches, sprawls into the cove. They are all below my feet as it washes to white sandy ripples. Trees come all the way to the shore. I climb the limestone. The paths bend on the coast and into the forest. Here is a nice boulder to sit while I dangle and reflect against the sun. Brain coral below my reflection is deceptively near, and there, on the distant side, my lovely bungalow. Still there, deserted, looking quite deserted from this bank.

unfinished

Spring Reflections

Things are really good here in the Philippines. First off, teaching grade one has been a real joy. Something of an adjustment and definitely a new experience for me, but a welcome one. Working with the little ones is a different type of teaching. I make a lot of assessments and plan lots of activities, but we don’t give grades at that level. We play games all the time and every activity is some sort of hands on exploration experience. We cover four units of inquiry over the course of the year: friendship, wellness, growth, and imagination. All of the skills like literacy, numeracy, and social are taught within the inquiry units.

The kids are delightful. It’s been wonderful to have an opportunity to build relationships with such bright and fun little people from all over the world. I have students from Japan, Denmark, Italy, France, Korea, Germany, Mongolia, Thailand, and Laos, to name a few, and in the inclusion classes where I co-teach my students in the general education class there are a lot more nationalities. I’ve been surprised at how relaxing working with them has been. I was afraid it was going to be all about wiping noses and changing soggy pants, but there is never any of that, although I do tie an occasional shoe. They are all so excited to be at school every day and they love their teachers. Working with small pull out groups of six of fewer and having a teaching assistant makes everything very manageable.

My teaching assistant is awesome. She’s finishing up her master’s degree at the University of the Philippines and working at ISM while she does it. Her family owns a private school in the north of the country where she plans to go into administration, so I probably won’t be able to keep her for longer than the next school year. But for the time being, it’s great to have such a proactive and skilled TA to work side by side with.

It’s awesome being part of a top notch ESL department. The ESL teachers here are all highly qualified and experienced. The school spends a lot of money and puts a high priority on its ESL program. We have a different ESL teacher for each grade level in the elementary school, make use of the most current research and methodology and are provided with some of the best resources available. Although the school already has Promethean boards for all the grade one classrooms, I’m excited that they have already purchased one for my ESL classroom to be installed this summer. It isn’t always the case that schools provide those kinds of resources for their special needs programs.

But life isn’t all about work, right? The social scene here has been vibrant. ISM has a gregarious community of over 200 teachers, the majority of them expatriates, and there are always social activities happening. Over the past year I played with our touch rugby team, have been part of an afternoon cross fitness group, and there are always the ubiquitous parties and get togethers to go to.  Manila itself is relatively western and I’ve had an opportunity to run in a number of five and ten kilometer races that take place nearby almost every Sunday.

I’ve managed to fit in a couple vacations. Almost every time I’ve been out of Manila the trip has included some SCUBA diving. I earned my rescue diver certification last October and explored Sabah, part of Malaysian Borneo, over the Christmas and New Years Break. That trip began with a jaunt to the summit of Mt. Kinabalu, the highest mountain in South East Asia, and ended with a five-day dive trip in amazing Sipadan. I just returned from a spring break adventure on a live aboard dive boat at Tubbataha, an isolated reef in the center of the pirate infested Sulu Sea. We saw schools of sharks, a manta and all sorts of other underwater apparitions.

I have a few plans brewing for the end of the school year and the summer. I’d like to swim with the whale sharks at Donsol over Easter. In July I’ll go back to the states to make my usual rounds to Cullman (outside Birmingham), Atlanta, and Panama City Beach. I’ll be moving to a different condo in a different part of Manila in late June, to an area called Makati.

New Housing Acceptance Letter

Thank you for offering me 2002 Park Tower as a new home. I accept. My hope is that I will move in and happily live there for a number of years, but first I need to make a few requests that will help to make the apartment into a comfortable and well-loved home.

First, it would be nice if the walls were repainted. If this is ok then I would like them painted in light colors that will brighten up the interior. A light beige would work well in the living room and hallway and plain white for the bedrooms and bathrooms.  The kitchen should also be white and the cabinets the same light beige as the living room. Please remove all the nails and screws from the walls. Do not rehang any of the artwork. Most of the artwork and wall decorations that came with the condo have been stored in the maid’s room for years now, and I do not intend to display these either. If possible, please remove all the artwork from the condo so that it will no longer be taking up the limited storage space. This includes removing the pictures bolted into the kitchen walls.

It was previously agreed that the dinning room table and chairs would be removed along with the TV and TV stand. Also please remove the small tea table and chairs from the master bedroom. If it is possible to remove the maid’s bed I would appreciate that since I will not need a live in maid and would like the extra storage space for other usage.

There are a number of smaller items I have no need for and would like removed so that they will not need to be stored. These include all bedding, sheets, comforters, pillows and blankets, the floral lamps in the master bedroom, all dishes, utensils, cooking utensils, knives, pots, pans, dish towels, pot holders, the microwave, and the toaster oven. Essentially, I would like the kitchen empty with the exception of the stove and refrigerator. Finally, if possible, the dinning room chandelier can also be removed and replaced with a light similar or identical to the other living room light.

There are also a few repairs and modifications that I would like to request. I would like the current Internet connection, PLDT, and phone service canceled. The cable TV hookup is currently in the bedroom, but I want to make sure it is available in the living room, where I intend to put my TV. A few repairs are called for. The shower knobs in the master bedroom are very warn, loose and the hot and cold are mislabeled. Please replace these and label them correctly. In the guest bathroom the door sticks and the fan is unnaturally noisy. Please have these repaired.

I realize there are a number of requests here, but I hope they can all be attended to. As a whole, I love the apartment and am very excited about moving in. My plan is to live here for many years, Attending to these requests will go a long way towards making it into the lovely, comfortable home I intend it to become. Thanks very much for your attention.

Review: Borneo Diver’s Mabul Island Resort

Borneo Divers Mabul Resort is the kind of place that gives you a feeling the local staff is having a wonderful time, at your expense. When I booked a four night, five day stay over New Years 2011, I had high expectations not only because of the resort’s good reputation, but also because for the price you’ll pay to stay here, you should expect quality. There are a lot of great things about the place, the rooms are clean and comfortable, the facilities attractive and well maintained, and the diving operation is top notch (although you should expect to pay an additional fee for each piece of equipment you borrow, even if you purchase an “all inclusive” dive package.) My complaint is in the general treatment I received. Having spent ten years now, off and on, living and traveling around South East Asia and the Pacific islands, I’ve come to expect, at the very least, the courtesy and efficiency you would receive at a family-run guesthouse, so at pricey resorts like BDMR, they need to step it up a notch to make it worth the money. Unfortunately, the service doesn’t even meet friendly budget guesthouse standards. I know when I’m being treated like a commodity, and I don’t appreciate it.

You’ll feel this pattern manifest itself even before you ever get to Mabul. If you’re waiting at the Seafest (their recommended hotel in Semporna) for a 9:15 pickup, bring something to read for that extra hour you’ll have to spend waiting in the lobby before your driver arrives. When finally you do get on the boat, you’ll meet the captain, a gruff, bulky man with a strained smile. Be sure you have your camera because he’ll demand you take photos and point out to you exactly what you need to be talking photos of. This is not to say the ride is not photo worthy, it’s stunning on a sunny day. You could probably figure the whole thing without the orders. But don’t mind the captain too much, it’s just his way of trying to ingratiate himself to you for when he tries to sell you overpriced trinkets when he gives you the ride back to shore at the end of your stay.

And this is a general experience among guests here, the feeling that the staff is sizing you up to see what they can get off of you. You’ll see them all gathered around the beach bar at night, strumming guitars, taking up most of the tables. When the bar tender tries to talk you into letting him give you a tour of tiny Mabul one day (instead of diving Sipadan), don’t expect it will be free. When you see the cool, hip boat crewmember diving with you and filming with a video camera, you might ask after the dive if you could see the video some time. “OK, I’ll try to get it done before you leave,” he’ll respond. Amazingly, it will be done for dinner that night, and it will be really good quality too. Once you watch it, he’ll try to sell it to you for US $100.

Although I really don’t expect that type of free merchandising among the staff at a pricey resort, it didn’t ruin the place for me. What really ruined it was being lied to and given the run-around when I tried to get some laundry done. The reception desk is very poorly manned, except for during checkout time (that’s 9:30 am, you’ll wait in the lobby again until 11:00 when the boat leaves). I brought some laundry to the desk one morning before a dive and no one was there, I was told to come back in half an hour and when I did and no one was there again, I was lied to (in a particularly rude way) about what time the desk opened, even though the hours are clearly posted. That didn’t make me feel very valued, nor did the stinky laundry when it was returned to me after being given another run around the next morning of my way back to the mainland.

The meals aren’t very flattering to write about either. They’re set up buffet style, and some of the dishes are good, but there is a general lack of attention to detail. For example, if you would like to make a salad, you might want lettuce to place those onions, tomatoes and cucumbers on top of, but alas, it somehow seems to have been forgotten along with sugar or syrup for the French toast. We had the same rubbery lamb three nights in a row, cooked three different ways because that’s how long it took them to get rid of it. Make sure not to come to breakfast later than the starting time because if you do, you’ll have trouble finding a place to sit with all the dirty plates covering the tables. Morning doesn’t appear to be a good time for this place.

Believe it or not, I had an absolutely fantastic stay at BDMR, I dove Sipadan eleven times, three out of four days, and it was mind-blowing. I made some great friends here, and we had fun expressing our amazement at the lackluster staff, along with the beauty of the islands. The view from the end of the BDMR pier would be outstanding, by the way, if there weren’t a hideous run-down oil rig directly in front of it (converted into another resort). But the crew of the diving operation are fun and professional, with the exception of the boat driver who tried to rush everyone into the water with no regard for safety, “OK-go-go-go.”

There is nothing wrong with Borneo Diver’s Mabul Resort that a little bit of present, onsite, and competent management couldn’t fix. One of the owners showed up with his family for the pleasant New Years celebration, but mysteriously disappeared afterwards and was never seen again, perhaps to his home in Kota Kinabalu. Other than that, there didn’t really seem to be anyone in charge of the place. Why not spend a little bit of those high prices to create a well trained staff instead of giving jobs to a cousin or brother-in-law, because the current staff is below what I would expect from any small hotel or guesthouse, much less a high priced dive resort. Diving Sipadan is any tropical diver’s dream and not to be missed, but do yourself a  favor and find someplace that makes you feel good about spending your money there, this one shouldn’t make the final cut until they do a little bit of reorganizing.

Rescue Diver

Safety means first aid to the uninjured.  ~Author Unknown

Fall break was from October 23 to November 2, the fist long break of the school year, and my first chance to get out and see a bit of the Philippines. I took the opportunity to visit Sipalay, a remote town surrounded by beaches being developed for tourism on the island of Negros. Guime, our school strings teacher and the only other single male hired this year, was my companion and the primary architect behind the trip. He had made the plan over a month ago, while I joined up a few days before we left.

To get to Sipalay, early Saturday morning we flew a sketchy Cebu Pacific DC9 from Manila to Bacolod, the largest city on Negros. From the Bacolod airport it was a forty five minute ride in a minivan to the Ceres bus terminal, and then a six hour long bus ride to Sugar Beach, just outside the small town of Sipalay. Despite it’s length, the ride was beautiful. We traveled along the coast for much of the trip, looking out the window at the beaches and picturesque little fishing villages. We were finally let off in Montillia, a village in the middle of nowhere, where a motorized tricycle took us down an unpaved road past the banana trees and palm groves to a river mouth opening into the sea. Here a boat from our lodge was waiting to pick us up for a ten-minute high-tide jaunt to our abode for the week. We arrived just in time for a painted sunset over the water while imbibing in a few San Miguel Pale Pilsners and munching cheese balls and pizza.

The place we stayed couldn’t be called a resort if the word is to retain much of a standard. It was a laidback, beachfront hotel called Takatuka Lodge, named after the magical island journeyed to by Pippy Longstockings in the eponymously named movie. The layout of the place was surreal, thick in a cornucopia of colorful sculptures, unusual decorations and designs creating an almost hallucinogenic affect, such as the snorkeler peering down at us from a dining room ceiling painted to look like the ocean surface, or the bathroom with crooked floors like a fun house. Everywhere was some creative and enchanted figure or object to entertain the guests when walking back and forth from the lodge to lounge chairs and beach hammocks.

But we were men with a mission beyond mere relaxation, feast, and alcohol, although we did succeed in those endeavors.  We were there to take respective diving courses. Guime, being new to the pacific paradises of south east Asia, had resolved to get his PADI SCUBA certification at the first possible chance. We had discussed it one evening in Manila. At the time I had thought I would pass on the Sipalay trip since I was already a diver, but then, while getting my first aid certification at work near the end of September, the course instructor had informed us that the first aid certification qualifies me to take a course in becoming a PADI certified rescue diver. This got the mushy mental wheels creaking in my forehead, and shazam, there I was in Sipalay taking a five days rescue diver course.

The course itself was 19,500 Philippine Pesos, slightly under $500 US and slightly more than the basic open-water course that Guime was undergoing. Our instructor, Mark, was a co-owner of the lodge with his brother, and took care of the dive operation. Mark is a tall and well-built Swiss man and a first rate dive instructor who takes his time with students and takes the acquisition of necessary diving skills seriously. The training was a lot of fun, but quite challenging. Being able to sit in on the basic open water diving skills that Guime was learning enhanced my learning of the new rescue skills. We would swim off the beach and find a nice place three meters below the surface to practice. First we would practice basic diving skills like buoyancy control, mask clearing, using signals, and adjusting equipment. Then we would change to rescue diver scenarios in which Guime would take on the roll of the victim that I had to rescue.

At one point I joked with Guime that he should give up diving as I already had to rescue him fifteen or twenty times. Indeed, I had to calm him down when he was panicked, tow him to safety when he was exhausted, save him and bring him to the surface when he had run out of air below, tow him to shore when he had passed out, giving him rescue breaths in the water while swimming, drag him onto the beach, give him CPR, hook up the emergency oxygen supply and provide him with it. Clearly, Guime had no business diving.

But dive we did, four times to practice the skills we had learned. The first was on an artificial reef Mark had made just off the shore. The second was called Sunken Island, a coral island glittering with color and inhabited by a galore of shimmering reef fish. Our third dive was Julian’s Wreck, a Philippine cargo ship that had sunk, split into clunky steel pieces and was now the home to a piquant assortment of coral formation and sea life. And then there was Turtle Head Point, where I had my final skills test as a rescue diver.

Here was the scenario.  I was in the boat with my dive buddy, Guime, when suddenly, a strange diver clambered up the ladder and said he had lost his friend underwater twenty minutes earlier and was worried because he hadn’t surfaced. Guime and I had to dawn our SCUBA gear, take backward rolls into the waves, snorkel out to the spot the missing diver was last seen, then descend. First I had to undertake a missing diver search using a compass and creating a small square that expanded from the center point, covering a wider and wider area with each passing. We finally found the missing diver (played by Mark) unresponsive at 12 meters depth. After establishing that he was unconscious, I had to cradle his tank with my knees, hold his respirator in his mouth, and bring him slowly to the surface by inflating air into my BCD while being sure not to rise too quickly, mindful of the dangers of decompression sickness. It’s a tricky thing to do.

Once at the surface, I established that he was not breathing (because he told me). Then while providing rescue breaths I towed him steadily toward the boat. Normally, in such an emergency situation you should drop his weight belt and most of his equipment to the bottom, but since it was a simulation and the lodge did not want to lose expensive dive equipment, I had to do all this with it still in tack. The biggest challenge was when we reached the boat. As I mentioned earlier, Mark is a big man, and, while he was still wearing his weight belt, I had to take him up the ladder by placing his back against it and with his knees over my shoulders climb up. The boat crew had one arm each and we dragged him on board where I simulated CPR and then administered oxygen. He survived and so did I, but I barely.

By Friday we had finished our courses and still had a few days to hike, swim, read, eat and enjoy the other experiences that Sipalay has to offer. Then on Monday, we took a bus through the mountains to another provincial capital, Dumaguete, and on Tuesday a flight back to Manila for work on Wednesday. It’s a wonderful thing to visit such a beautiful, exotic and fun destination, but also to be able to do something productive beyond the regular beach sitting. Now time to count down to the next vacation? December 15 to January 10. No idea what to do yet, but hopefully something will come up.

Essentials of Reading

At its essence, reading means looking at print and using knowledge about sound/symbol relationships (phonetics), word order and grammar (syntax), and meaning (semantics) to understand a text. These essential elements of reading are the same regardless of language, which is why, for English language learners, having strong first language reading skills is a huge help in developing second language literacy skills. There is a big difference between learning to be literate, and learning to be literate in another language. Many of the grade one ESL students have the dual challenge of beginning to read in both English and their first language at the same time. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the essentials I try to keep in mind with working with beginning English readers:

Beginning English readers are just beginning to pull meaning from short texts. They may still have trouble with the English Alphabet and are often still learning the simple phonetic sounds of the letters. Once they do learn basic phonics, the next steps are to help them learn sight words, high frequency words, consonant blends, and word families. In choosing texts I try to provide them with basic sentence patterns that repeat themselves through the book.

When working with beginning English readers it’s a good idea to provide direction about how to select a book within their reading abilities to assure success with their early English readings. I try to allow them to illustrate texts they have read as a response to it. It’s also nice to do this kind of response activity with partners or in groups so they can share their ideas with their peers. We also do a lot of shared readings together as a group in which everyone reads the same book out loud at the same time.

As a teacher, I enjoy performing directed listening-thinking activities by reading aloud to the class and modeling how experienced readers make predictions about a text as they read. Sometimes the students will create story maps and other graphic organizers for the text and they always love to dramatize their readings. With all these ideas and great teaching techniques available, another thing very important to keep in mind is that it should always be fun for the students, as long as they are enjoying their learning, they will be motivated to learn more.

Characteristics of Beginning English Readers

• Are just beginning to pull meaning from short texts.

• May still have trouble with the English Alphabet.

• Can usually read simple texts.

• May have difficulty processing information beyond sentence-level texts.

When working with beginning English readers:

• Provide direction about how to select a book within their reading abilities to assure success with their early English reading encounters.

• Use books that make use of repeated word patterns and phrases.

• Create Dialogue Journals and use them with your students.

• Allow them to illustrate texts they have read as a response to it individually, with partners, or in groups.

• Perform shared readings together as a group with illustrated, oversized books.

• Perform Directed Listening-Thinking Activities by reading aloud to the class and modeling how experienced readers make predictions about a text as they read.

• Create story maps and other graphic organizers for the text.

• Dramatize readings

• Use the Language Experience Approach

• Build as much Background Knowledge as possible before you read the text.

Characteristics of Intermediate English Readers`

• Possess a large sight vocabulary.

• Have the ability to comprehend various types of texts.

• Can generally speak English well enough to discuss text meaning orally.

• Have a fair amount of automaticity in their reading.

• Can read with some degree of fluency.

• Can read extended texts.

• Have difficulty  working with texts that contain new vocabulary.

• Generally need less assistance than beginning readers.

When working with Intermediate English readers:

• Continue to use teaching strategies used with beginning English readers.

• Use Mind Mapping activities.

• Use Directed Reading-Thinking Activities

• Create Literature Response Journals

• Develop scripts to dramatize readings

• Adapt stories into plays and scripts for film or videotape

Research Supported ESL Activities

Colleen

the only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only Filipino girl I’ve spent much personal time with since my arrival is Rodelyn Baldesco, she prefers Colleen. She’s paid visits to my condo five or six times now, usually dropping in over the weekend for a few hours. We talk, swim, watch TV, go to the mall, stuff like that. One night she spent on my sofa. She had been here until late, and back then she was living in Cavite with her cousin, over an hour away, and was too sleepy to make the trip home. She said the guest bed wasn’t comfortable and preferred the sofa (I really need to buy some guest bed sheets). When I went out to check on her, she had, it seemed, become captivated with my cell phone: the games,  the functions, the touch screen. That next week she got a job at Red Ribbon, a bakery franchise, and worked there just long enough to get her fist paycheck. Then she quit and used the money to buy herself a nicer cell phone.

Last night Colleen came by and cooked dinner. She made Tinola, a Filipino dish, kind a soup with chicken, green papaya, ginger, and green chilies. The ginger gave it a lovely, supple attar and the delicately sour, spicy flavor was mouth watering. Her father owns a little neighborhood diner in Makati (an area of Manila not far from where I live), the kind with plastic chairs, open air, and some electric fans. She says neighborhood people always come in to eat because they love her father’s cooking and sometimes she cooks there too. Last night she also brought a fluffy white forest cake from Red Ribbon, which made for a tasty desert. I’ve still got half of it sitting in the freezer.

We have a nice friendship going. For me, she provides a window into Filipino culture and society, pleasant company, and last night, a delicious dinner. For her, I think she’s curious about a lot of things, about foreigners, about new things in life. She’s young and seems to be trying to work out exactly what she wants for herself.

Sometimes she’ll ask my opinion about different opportunities that arise, and take advantage of opportunities to try new things while we’re visiting. We’ve worked out that she doesn’t like red rice or American style spaghetti (Filipino spaghetti has lots of sugar in it). But she likes ordering pizza, and she loves my iMac. About two weeks ago, after she left from another visit, I uncovered a file full of photos she had made of herself with the iMac using Photo Booth (a program for the built in camera). I think the photos speak for themselves about what she likes.

So there’s another bit of flavor added to the halo-halo mix of life in Manila. She’s going to kill me when she sees this.

Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading

Teachers may help improve their student’s reading skills by implementing an uninterrupted sustained silent reading (USSR) time. This is a regular time, either daily or weekly, when students simply spend time reading silently to themselves. Students can spend the time reading whatever they enjoy, with no tests assessments or other strings attached. The idea behind this is to both foster a love for reading by making it a time students can use to enjoy and relax and to let students practice their reading, just like they would algebra or basketball, to become better at it. Here are some points to think about:

• Simply providing students with daily time and opportunities for silent uninterrupted reading fosters good reading habits and a positive attitude towards reading.

• Allowing students to read from self-selected books helps them to learn that reading is a pleasure, not a chore.

• This type of program creats a friendly environment where students can enjoy reading and do not have to worry about being tested.

• You can providing a wide range of books of different reading levels that students can read without difficulty so that students may experience success with self selected books and grow in their positive self image.

• Read silently with students to model the importance of reading sets a good example and helps build your relationship with your students.

• Providing a selection of culturally appropriate reading material helps students feel comfortable in school and meets multicultural education standards.

• Regularly engaging students with follow up activities such as writing in a journal, role-playing part of their story, designing a poster, writing a letter to the author, creating a mind map or sharing views with a small groups are fun activities that help build vocabulary, background knowledge and comprehension skills.

• USSR can be used to create an Extensive Reading program.

Try creating an Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading program. It works and it’s a lot of fun. That’s how teaching is supposed to be!

ESL Activities and Methodology

Anilao

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.
James Cameron

Last weekend was our third three-day weekend in the past four weeks. Not a bad way to begin the school year. It’s been so long since we’ve had to work a full week everyone’s afraid we’ve lost the stamina to do it. The first two holidays I just stayed in Manila, explored different areas of the city, and bought a new iMac (27”, i5), but by the time the third holiday rolled up, I could feel in my gut that it was time to see something beyond the city. I just wasn’t sure where. I didn’t want to spend half the weekend in transit, and I’m still just learning about what travel enticements The Philippines has to offer.

The Thursday before our Friday holiday was a professional development day, and as luck would have it, the answer fell into my lap. Got to love it when that happens. During the faculty breakfast I was chatting with my program leader about what to do and how best to do it. She invited me to join her, her husband, and their three kids on their drive to Anilao the next morning. Anilao, as I found out, is a string of dive resorts on the coast about a two to three-hour drive south of Manila (depending on traffic), and a favorite SCUBA destination for many divers living in the area.

It was my first time outside the city, and I enjoyed watching as the scenery faded from suburbs to countryside. We passed through a few small towns and then brushed against the coast. It was a pleasure to get to know the family a little more intimately and the hours passed by in no-time. Once there, I checked into a small resort called Arthur’s Place, a short walk from where my friends were staying, which was already booked. Arthur’s place is one of the oldest and most well-loved resorts in Anilao. Opened since the 1980s, some expats might find it a bit too rustic, but for me, those laid back places with a little character are where I’m most comfortable. A small room with two single beds, a cold shower and a fan cost 1,200 Philippine Pesos, about $25 US per night. It was clean and friendly, and I’d recommend it to any travelers, although there are better places for a family with children.

My impression of Anilao as a dive destination was that it’s got some good diving and is convenient for any SCUBA enthusiast who’s been trapped in Manila and wants to get off for a dip, but it’s not a place for international jet setters to plan an extensive vacation. My first dive site was The Cathedral. We went down in decent visibility and saw lots of scrub, a touch of coral, a few fish, and a box sized castle. The dive master fed the fish, causing them to swarm in front of us (I don’t like feeding wild animals because it can cause them to act unnaturally around humans). There was a meter high Spanish cross, supposedly placed there by Marcos, the former dictator, and a pair of high coral covered rocks. As we swam around the first boulder the scenery started to become more dramatic, but we were halted by a current and had to turn back. We swam again past the castle and through the semi-baron area, struggling into a slight current this time, a small fish attacked me, nibbling on my legs, perhaps mistaking my leg hairs for the bread he was accustomed to receiving. It was a sub-par dive, but I’m sure it could be quite good under the right conditions.

The second dive was much better. It was at a site named Twin Rocks, where we descending past a meter long clam to a shipwreck, a small police boat by the look of it. As we wove our way up along a ridge, the coral thickened. A couple lion fish wobbled between the coral, and an assortment of reef fish went about their busy daily routines. There were some nice sized batfish shimmering about and thick schools of dark minnows bottom feeding. We passed by a school of small barracuda and stopped briefly to gaze.

The grand finale was spectacular. It was a huge school of jackfish, each about two silvery feet long. I want to say there were a thousand, and if that’s an exaggeration, it’s not a big one. In any case, it seemed like a thousand to me, swarming together, swimming in tight formation, curving, circling, embodying one massive creature, not quite of this world, more spirit than matter, making a half circle around me within arms reach. It was something quite special to see. We watched them for the remainder of the dive.

I had to rent each piece of equipment that I used, plus pay for the tank, dive ticket, and my share of the boat and dive master, but it was all quite reasonable. My dive partners were a group of Spaniards who live in Manila. At the end of the trip we exchanged numbers so we could journey down to Anilao and dive together again before too long. All in all, it was a great use of the holiday.

Life in the Philippines continues to be good.

An Interview with Muhammad

This is the result of a project created by Grade 7 ESL students at North Jakarta International School in November 2009. Our unit focus was understanding Islam, the predominate religion of Indonesia. Improving English literacy and understanding historical fiction were also among our objectives. These excerpts are a fictional account of an interview with Muhammad taken after his triumphant return to Mecca following the Hijrah. It was entirely created by grade 7 ESL students.

Q: How many days did it take to make the Quran?

A: I took many years to listen to Gabriel, the angel, and wrote down billions of word. It was quite hard but for everyone in world, so I finally finished the Quran after several years.

Q: How did you feel when the angel, Gabriel, said there was only 1 god?

A: I was very happy that the angel, Gabriel, said there was only 1 god. Also, I really want to see God, and I am willing. I will teach God’s words to people. Thankfully, now many people believe Islam.

Q: What was your first mood when you went to Medina?

A: When I went to Medina, I was very excited, sometimes embarrassed, and very happy. I decide to be patient and be calm. Also, I tried to spread my religion called Islam. I was looking for a new place to start my religion. This was my mood when I was in Medina….This thing will make one immense religion.

Q: Why did Islam spread so large?

A: Islam spread very large because of me. I went to Medina and taught Islam to the people in Medina. After that, I brought an army to Mecca and made them Muslim. I conquered the other country and made them believe Islam. I will travel and go all around the worlds to spread Islam. With my hard work at least, they start to believe Islam, and later on, other Muslims will build temples, and they will be called Mosques, and they they will be spreading Islam.

Q: Why did you attack Mecca?

A: The reason I attacked Mecca is that I wanted to spread Islam, and also, they once tried to kill me because of money, so I wanted to punish them. It worked and most of the people in Mecca became Muslim and started to believe in Allah. I also wanted to possess Mecca because Mecca is where I was born.

Q: Were you sad when the people in Mecca were cruel to you?

A:I wanted to teach the people of Mecca, but only some of the people heard. That makes me sad, and they hated me because I said there is only one god. That made them angry. They thought that I was disturbing them.

Q: How much soldiers did you bring with you to Mecca?

A: About 1,000. Even though we had a small amount of soldiers, they were very strong. One soldier could fight 10 Mecca soldiers. I was very proud to have such an army. However, sadly, excluding people who were sick and went back, we had only 800 soldiers left.

Q: how did you rule Mecca after you conquered it?

A: The people started to believe in Islam. I also wanted them to do what the Qur’an says, including the ‘five pillars of Islam’. Next, I went to the Kaaba and destroyed all the idols in there by some force. Idols contravene the Qur’an which says to believe in only one god, so I abandoned them. Some of the people, like the seller of idols, are well-punished, but others who obey my order live a peaceful and happy life.

Q: Why did you have to destroy the idols in Kaaba?

A: I wanted to show people only one god exists. When I was destroying those idols, people predicted disasters were going to come to me. But nothing happened. Now they realize there’s only one god and the rest are fake. I’ll destroy them again if I see other fake idols.

See Unit Plan (UBD)

Manila

One month in Manila and all is well. I love the new job. The professionalism I’ve been greeted with at every level from ISM has been fantastic, from the school representative who met me at the airport before I ever reached the immigration line, to a detailed week long orientation program, to my co-workers, to the meetings which always begin on time, to the ongoing professional development, to the incredible technology and resources being used here. It’s outstandings.

After I first flew in to the country, I was driven in a school van to my new condo in Fort Bonifacio Global City. It was already furnished with the necessary comforts: beds in the master and guest bedrooms, milk and orange juice in the fridge, food in the cupboard, a TV, Microwave, silverware, etc. My bedroom window, on the eleventh floor of a high-rise overlooks the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, the largest cemetery in the pacific for Americans who died during World War II, with over 17,000 graves. It’s a green, peaceful respite from the skyscrapers in the opposite direction. Fort Bonifacio had been the main US Military base, Fort McKinley, during the days of American control between the Spanish American War and the end of World War II. These days it’s being developed into a trendy place with high end shopping and condos going up everywhere. It’s also been the home of that latest incarnation of ISM for the past decade.

From what I’ve seen so far, the school itself is top notch. The use of the most current educational research in developing its programs, the caliber of its employees, and its resources are all phenomenal. A great example of this are the promethean boards in each of the first grade classrooms. Know that that is? I didn’t before I got here. A promethean board is basically an interactive white board. Anything on the teacher’s computer can be projected onto the white board with an LCD projector installed on the ceilings. Then the computer can be operated from the white board using special pens. So you can imagine all the amazing programs that you can use with the kids during lessons. You can even write things on the board, move the words around, then save what you wrote and bring it back at a later date. But really, that’s just the beginning of what you can do. They’re new this year, so we’re only getting started.

Another great example is my teaching assistant, Nina. She’s a Filipina grad student who greets me every morning as soon as I walk in with, “Good morning, is there anything you need.” It’s amazing how proactive and competent she is. Even when I can’t think of much for her to do, she finds things herself, “would you like me to…” get some more resources, prepare computer programs, complete paperwork, fix up the display boards, or any number of other things.  My typical instruction for her is, ”yeah, do that, that’s a great idea.”

Then there are the adorable children. I absolutely love working with first graders, even if they are all missing teeth. Kids at that age are excited to be at school, and the activities you do with them are usually pretty fun. They say a lot of innocent but insightful things. Being greeted with hugs is a nice change from middle school angst, and the ESL kids are so happy to have someone there to help them with their English acquisition. While the general classroom teachers walk around with warn looks on their faces and seem nervous and exhausted, my largest group is six, and with my teaching assistant in tow, that’s three kids per adult. With those numbers we’re usually able to enjoy ourselves with what we’re doing.

I suppose I’m still in the wonder and awe phase of this whole operation. Hopefully, further down the road, things will still be sublime as I get to know the city and country better. I’ve yet to venture out of Manila, but it’s a clear day today, and I can see a pretty big volcano off in the distance past the cemetery. I’m going to have to get a closer look at that thing before too long.

Education and Conflict in Mindanao

The Philippines archipelago is an independent nation united by a vastly diverse mix of ethnicities brought together through a similar colonial history. Within it’s political boundaries which spread over an area slightly larger than Arizona, about 300,000 square kilometers, 78 languages and 500 dialects have been identified (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005). Despite a wide range of clear differences, most of the country’s population has come together to forge a sovereign nation, free from the foreign rulers of its colonial past. In the Southern region of Mindanao, however, there has been an ongoing separatist conflict between the Muslim population and the national government. This conflict is the result of a long history of independent governance among the Muslim people and the cultural and religious differences between the Islamic south and the Christian majority that controls the rest of the country.

The population of the Philippines, now nearly 90 million, is 93% Christian, mostly catholic, and 5% Islamic (Dolan, 2003). The Bangsmoro or Moro people, Filipino Muslims, are made up of thirteen different ethno-linguistic groups, found mostly in Southern and Western Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago and Southern Palawan (Abinales, 2000). History of Moro self-governance reaches back long before the Spanish arrived in 1565 and began their Filipinas colony. When the Spanish first sailed to Mindanao, they encountered an Islamic civilization that had been thriving for hundreds of years. The Spanish attempted to conquer these Muslims throughout their reign in the region, but the Moro sultanates were never defeated and remained independent for more than 350 years of Spanish occupation in the rest of the Philippines. Spanish blockades and persistent attacks, however, took their tolls by weakening the Moro and reducing their territory (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005) .

By not being colonized by the Spanish, the Moro people were able to maintain their religious beliefs and continue to develop a vastly different culture from the rest of the Philippines (Milligan, 2003). The degree of fortitude necessary to remain free of domination speaks much about Moro culture. Today, with almost half a millennium of struggle for self- determination, fighting for their beliefs has clearly become a deeply ingrained part of the Moro psyche, as has pride in their ability to win the battles.

In 1898, after the Battle of Manila in the Spanish-American war, the Spanish ceded the Philippines to the United States. The Americans, by promoting education instead of Christian proselytism, were more successful in influencing the Moro than the Spanish (Cagoco-Guiam, 2004). The Americans used education to promote a pro-American, pro-democracy agenda and were successful in convincing many of the Moro leaders to send their children to the schools where they learned English and literacy skills. Due to this education plan, by the end of the American period the Moro people were more interested in having their providences annexed into an American territory than in becoming part of a Philippine state (Abinales & Amoroso, 2005).

Nevertheless, after World War Two, The United States granted the Philippines its independence, and the Christian majority in Manila governed the Moro for the first time in their history. Tensions were immediately raised between the Moro and the new Philippine government. Manila began a policy of promoting the migration of Christian Filipinos to Mindanao, and the newly arriving immigrants began encroaching on Moro territory and culture. In 1968, after 20 Moro youths were killed by government soldiers, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) formed as a separatist movement, fighting for an independent Muslim Mindanao.

Over a 100,000 deaths have been estimated in the fighting since the early 1970s, when the separatist conflict reached its peak (Milligan, 2003). The fighting continued into the 1990’s when large gains were made in the peace process after the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in 1990 and a truce between the MNLF and the national government in 1996. Many set backs have occurred, however, such as the “all-out war,” launched by former Philippine president Joseph Estrada, and periodic bombings and kidnappings launched by separatist groups, including Abu Sayyaf (Cagoco-Guiam, 2004). Although conflict still exists today, the situation has improved dramatically since the creation of the ARMM and the peace treaty with the MNLF and prospects for sustainable peace remain. One important part of the continuing peace process lies in the further development of the education system among the Moro people.

The Relationship Between Education and Conflict

The problems faced in education among the Moro community are immense. These problems include overall poor performance in public schools, under funding of basic education, and a large pool of illiterate and under-schooled adolescents and adults (The World Bank, 2003). These problems work together to form a vicious cycle. Without proper funding and quality education, or a strong value of education within a culture, there is little that the education system can do to improve the standard of living for the people. These low education standards create a large body of under-educated young people. Under-educated teens and young adults are a prime recruiting ground for members of the separatist movement (Cragin & Chalk, 2003). The destruction caused by the fighting between the separatist movement and the government is devastating to the economy, kills and displaces skilled professionals, and damages the overall quality of education, so the cycle continues. To solve these problems, we must look at their root causes such as poverty, culture of conflict and historical disadvantage and find ways to change them for a better future.

Educational Inequity in Muslim Mindanao

A great deal of disparity in education is present between the Moro civilization and the nation as a whole. The problems that the Moro face can be illustrated by comparing education in Islamic areas of Mindanao with national averages. In Western Mindanao, an area with a high concentration of Moro, the average number of years of schooling is five and the literacy rate is 65%.  The national rates are seven years of schooling and 93% literate (Krinks, 2002). Data collected by the World Bank, makes a comparison specifically between the ARMM and national averages (The World Bank, 2003). This data is summarized in the paragraph below.

While the incidences of poverty nation wide are 34%, in the ARMM they are almost double at 63%. The enrollment rate of students in primary school in the ARMM is 85% of the national average and cohort survival rate is 50% of the national average. Secondary school enrollment rate is 55% of the national average. The literacy rate for women in the ARMM is 71% of the national average. Finally, while the national per student expenditure on education is 1,526 Pesos, in the ARMM expenditure is significantly lower at 1,145 Pesos, only 75% of non-ARMM expenditure.

Clearly in order to create peace between the Moro people who have suffered from years of marginalization, and the national government, the gap in educational quality must be closed. The national government must spend the same on education among the Moro as it does throughout the rest of the nation. Increasing spending in education is likely to pay large dividends by aiding in a peaceful resolution to the conflict. In order to get students into the schools, and out of the militias, a school system, both adequate in educational quality and acceptable by the Moro people must be developed. This education system must have two main functions, first to create skilled professionals who will be able to improve the economic situation in Muslim Mindanao, and second, to promote peace and understanding throughout this diverse country.

Islam and Education Among the Moro

One major source of contention over schooling in Mindanao has been the Moro belief that Islam should play a role in their children’s formal education. They believe Qur’anic reading, Islamic morals and Arabic language must be a part of adequate schooling, and also wish to see other aspects of Moro culture, history and contributions woven into the curriculum (Milligan, 2003). This Moro vision for education is profoundly different from the curriculum that has been created for them in Manila by the Philippine’s highly centralized school system. The national curriculum is considered to be secular, although it is often criticized for having Christian values inherent in it. It also rarely focuses on Moro culture and values, and when it does include the Moro people, it is often not in a positive light (Bula, 1989). The result is a dual education system in Moro areas of Mindanao. One school system consists of public schools that follow the basic national curriculum; the other consists of privately owed madaris, religious schools that teach Islamic studies and the Arabic language (Daguino, 2004).

This dual education system has created numerous problems. Students who attend public schools find themselves to be strangers among their own people who say they are not learning what is necessary to become a good Muslim. The majority of Moro students, over 100,000, attend madaris and are not learning the skills non-Moro Filipinos require for employment. Students who receive their education from madaris are also not eligible to be admitted to national or private colleges and universities (Daguino, 2004). In addition, madaris, being privately owned religious institutions, are not eligible to receive badly needed national accreditation and funding.

As a solution to these problems, the ARMM government is exercising its privilege to create its own curriculum within the autonomous region. This curriculum combines important subjects in the national curriculum taught in the public schools (such as math, English language, and science) with the Islamic curriculum taught in the madaris. The method of doing this is two fold and includes changing both public schools and madaris. Islamic values and Arabic language study are now being placed within the public school curriculum, and important subjects, such as math and science, in the national curriculum are being infused into the madaris (Milligan, 2006). The result is intended to be a similar, standardized Moro curriculum taught both in Islamatized public schools and in mainstreamed madaris. This fusion of the dual schooling system has the purpose of making school acceptable for the Moro community and giving the students the kind of education they need to succeed in the modern Philippine economy.

The World Bank has made recommendations regarding how this combined school system should be funded. It recommends that traditional madaris that do not offer an integrated curriculum should be free to obtain support from local communities, but should not receive public resources. On the other hand, Madaris offering the basic national curriculum and working to meet national accreditation standards should receive public subsidy to assist in upgrading their standards, especially in underserved areas (The World Bank, 2003). This process, if successful, will help to solve the numerous issues that have developed regarding dissatisfaction with the curriculum and education system in the schools that serve Moro children. Getting students into the schools and to receive a quality education is fundamental to both ending conflict and developing the economy in Western Mindanao

The Purpose of Education in the Philippines

In order to improve the education system in Muslim Mindanao, both the national government and the government of the AARM must clearly state the objectives they have for their students in receiving a basic education. The process of creating a system of Islamic values in the schools is an excellent beginning to an improved curriculum. It will also be helpful to put together a system that creates a sense of national Philippine heritage and prepares students to become Philippine citizens. Not only should the government implement educational policies that are acceptable to the Moro people, they should create a national curriculum that promotes understanding between the Moro and all of the Philippines many diverse populations. This will be in accordance with the national government’s goal of instilling a sense of national identity among all the Filipino population (Milligan, 2003). It will be necessary to identify where these two objectives, national and Islamic identity, are at odds with one another. Important trade offs must be made. But in making these tradeoffs it is vital to maintain a dialogue with the historically oppressed Moro people and allow them to play the major role in deciding how their own educational system will function (Freire, 1970).

Tertiary Education

An increase in the role of universities and tertiary educational institutions in developing an education plan for peace would also prove beneficial. Universities can be used to promote literacy among under schooled adults and teens. Promoting a culture of literacy will have the affect of trickling down into the school children and encouraging attendance and literacy development. Literacy should be promoted using an informal system of literacy coaching. Universities can also be used to promote adequate teacher training for those wishing to work in schools in Mindanao and the ARMM. As more adequate teachers are trained, Moro schools will increase their effectiveness in educating their students.

Affirmative Action programs should also be promoted in tertiary institutions. These institutions should actively seek out members of the Moro community for higher education and professional development. Increasing the body of skilled professionals will have many benefits to the peace process. It will improve the economy of Muslim Mindanao, help create a culture that has stronger values in education, and give Filipino Muslims greater power over peacefully determining their own future.

Conclusion

The Philippine government has shown itself to be dedicated to the peace process. It has gone through the steps of creating an autonomous region for Filipino Muslims in return for peace. The national government is also playing an active role in reforming Moro schools to create an acceptable form of schooling. The international community has stepped forward with numerous aid plans and programs to help improve education in Muslim Mindanao (Asian Development Bank, 2004). With the efforts being made by the government, the Moro people, and the international community, it is conceivable that Mindanao is on its way to stable, lasting and just peace. As the reforms and aid plans continue to be played out, it will be interesting to watch their effect. If they are successful, perhaps other conflicted areas of the world can learn some lessons from the Southern Philippines, as these nations move toward resolving their internal struggles and conflicts.

References

Abinales, P. N. (2000). Making Mindanao: Cotabato and DAvao in the Formation of the Philippine Nation State. Manila: Ateneo De Manila University Press.

Abinales, P. N., & Amoroso, D. J. (2005). State and Society in the Philippines. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Asian Development Bank. (2004). Technical Assistance to the Republic of the Philippines for Development of Basic Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao: TAR: PHI 36677.

Bula, D. L. (1989). Muslims in the Philippine Elementary and Secondary School Textbooks: A Content Analysis Dansalan Quarterly, 10(3-4), 122-196.

Cagoco-Guiam, R. (2004). Mindanao: Conflicting Agendas, Stumbling Blocks, and Prospects Toward Sustainable Peace. In A. Heijmans, N. Simmonds & H. V. D. Veen (Eds.), Searching for Peace in Asia Pacific. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Cragin, K., & Chalk, P. (2003). Terrorism and Development. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Daguino, D. D. S. (2004). Secular and Islamic Education in the ARMM. Cotabato City: Center for Autonomy and Governance, Notre Dame University.

Dolan, R. E. (2003). Philippines: A country Study. In H. S. Calit (Ed.), The Philippines: Current Issues and Historical Background. New York: Nova Science Punlishers, Inc.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.

Krinks, P. (2002). The Economy of the Philipines: Elites, inequalities and economic restructuring. London: Routledge.

Milligan, J. A. (2003). Teaching between the Cross and the Crescent Moon: Islamic Identity, Postcoloniality, and Public Education in the Southern Philippines. Compartive Education Review, 47(4), 468-511.

Milligan, J. A. (2006). Reclaiming an Ideal: The Islamization of Education in the Southern Philippines. Compartive Education Review, 50(3), 410-430.

The World Bank. (2003). Human Development for Peace and Prosperity in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The Heart is a Lonely Airplane Stalker

One of my favorite books of all time is The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers about the varied lives of five people in a Georgia town who, for one reason or another, aren’t quite able to fit in. I’ve always found these characters fascinating, along with their attempts to connect with one another, and the one who has remained closest to my heart all the years since has been the protagonist, John Singer, a deaf-mute who wonders the streets with a disarming smile and a business card that says, “I read Lips.” Singer’s charming looks of interest and reads lip card before long have him considered among the wisest of town’s people and one by one, they begin divulging their deepest feelings to him.

What fascinates me is how simple life can be, and how out of reach that simplicity seems. Is that what people really want, a smiling deaf mute to nod and listen to them talk? And the truth is, more or less, yes. Oh, they would prefer a few, “that’s so interesting,”s thrown in there, but listening and nodding is just fine. I tried it on a thirty hour plane trip back to the US last summer, Jakarta to Birmingham. Four different airplanes, over a solid day of travel, and all I did was put on my biggest grin and hold it until my mouth hurt. Before long, on each plane and a number of airports, every person sitting next to me, or even some a seat away, were telling me their life stories. By the end of the trip I knew about their families, their backgrounds, where they were going and what they were doing. I stayed as quiet as I politely could, although I threw in a bit of positive feedback from time to time. I’m sure an, “I read lips,” card would have sufficed just as well.

So there it is, smile, nod and don’t have much of an opinion of your own, and you will be able to get on with anyone. It’s the easiest thing in the world, the problem is, when all the people want someone to smile and nod, it turns out that everyone is doing the talking, and nobody’s listening. So why can’t we just listen more? Here’s a clue, at the end of the book, John Singer shoots himself in the head. That’s about what I felt like doing after smiling and nodding for thirty hours on airplanes. That’s what I love about classic literature, you can learn so much from it.

A Philosophy for ESL teaching

My teaching philosophy is largely indebted to two great thinkers whose ideas continue to grow in influence over both education and the humanities as a whole. The first is Noam Chomsky and his theory of Universal Grammar. The idea that humans are mentally wired to acquire language naturally through development has enormous implications on ESL teaching. Language is best learned in an immersive environment, and ESL students, particularly after passing the beginner stages, will gain the cognitive academic language skills they need to succeed in school more readily when included in the mainstream classroom. In such an environment students can develop their English skills while simultaneously learning content in classes such as Social Studies or Science. When teachers target language fluency and vocabulary and create a safe, immersive environment, ESL students can rapidly acquire English, make a smooth transition out of the ESL program, and continue on to academic success.

The second idea that breathes daily through my instructional practices is Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Children, and adults too, develop most quickly by being lifted slightly past their skill capabilities by someone who already has gained those skills. It is the nature of the teaching profession to facilitate development by scaffolding class materials and activities to reach educational objectives. To acquire skills, students must engage in authentic activities targeting those skill objectives. Peer collaboration and mixing language abilities also allows students to facilitate growth in one another, lifting classmates past their present development zones. Vygotsky helps us understand why the group as a whole is greater than the sum of all its parts.

Within my ESL classroom I strive to create a safe, multicultural environment where learning is free to blossom. I do this by modeling interest in diversity and encouraging all attempts at the use of new language in ways that promote development of the learner. Collaboration between students can best be taught by modeling collaboration between teachers. When an ESL teacher and mainstream teacher work together in an inclusion environment, it has the potential to create a dynamic environment of cooperation and differentiated instruction that one teacher alone would have difficulty creating. Being informed about current research and methodologies is vital to good teaching practices, but it is also understanding the philosophies that drive these practices that make us exceptional practitioners.

Tough Times Build Charactor

It’s disheartening to hear from friends who are having a hard time with the economy back in the US. I’ve had my share of rough turns too, and I learned about poverty first hand in my late teens and early twenties, but looking back, I wouldn’t change it. Those difficult experiences taught me some of the most important lessons I could ever learn. Without them, I would never have learned about real happiness, about the simpler joys of travel and friendship, of a freshly caught tuna cooking of the grill behind a shack in a fishing village in Micronesia. Struggling to find something we enjoy makes us appreciate it so much more.

I’ve been hearing from a number of people lately about how much of a struggle it is to find work. The last time I moved away from the US, it was during the height of the housing boom and everyone seemed to be wheeling and dealing their ways to the good life. Now the stories are all about unemployment and divorce. It seems like everything comes and goes in cycles, whether it’s the price of a home or just day and night.

Having spent so much time on tropical islands, I’m aware that there’s no paradise and try not to waste time with regrets. If you’re a searcher, then keep searching, and you’ll find where you need to be. It’s a big world and there are certainly places you haven’t looked yet, haven’t even thought about looking. Something you didn’t even realize you wanted might pop off the trolley and run smack into you, knocking you for a loop. Cheer up and keep looking because discovery is the greatest joy of all.