Students of this school don’t let anything get in the way of their education.
It is a rainy March morning, and half of the student population of Lambukay Elementary School have decided stay home today. “The river usually swells during heavy rains,” says principal Maria Magelyn Canque. “If they come to school they might not be able to go home later.”
The river is just one of the obstacles the school’s 418 students have to hurdle in order to get a good education. Many of them live several kilometers away and have to walk over rolling hills and rocky roads. For the less committed, this can be a strong deterrent to attending class at all.
But the students of Lambukay in Banga, South Cotabato are obviously undaunted. Not only do they persevere in going to school — save for the occasional absences due to bad weather — they actually excel and outperform students in other schools.
Magelyn credits this in part to the school’s partnership with Kasilak. “We highly appreciate the help the foundation has been giving us,” she says. “Their contributions to the school have made our students more interested in learning.”
The partnership began in 2013 when Kasilak made the school a beneficiary of its Adopt-A-School Program. The scheme involves donating English, Math, and
Science books to the first grade class that year and continuing on until the batch graduates from elementary. The books they leave behind are used by the following batch, which leaves them to the next one and so on.
“We use the books to supplement the ones provided by the DepEd,” Magelyn says. “The students love them because they are in color. They can also follow the lessons easily because they are very systematic.”
The books have proven so effective that third grade teacher Cristine Joy B. Bico used them in coaching her student Hanna Guintolon for the District Science Quest in September 2016. “We reviewed for one hour each day for two weeks using these books,” Joy says. Hanna, who was nine at the time, won first place and went on to bag third place in the Division Individual Science Quest held a few days later.
Aside from the books, Kasilak also donated an educational media package made up of a TV, DVD player, and DVDs of ABS-CBN Foundation shows like Math Tinik and Sineskwela. The foundation also gave a desktop computer, printer, and science laboratory materials.
“All these have had a huge impact on the students,” Magelyn says. “They are always excited to watch the videos and learn from them.” The teachers, for their part, have been using the computer to print colorful visual aids for the students.
The school has seen so much improvement that the DepEd cited it for having the most outstanding performance in the whole of South Cotabato in 2016. “A small school in a far-flung area won over more than 3,000 schools in 10 municipalities and one city in the province,” Magelyn says with pride.
“We are very thankful for the assistance Kasilak has been giving us. Because of it we have become famous,” she adds jokingly. “There are still two years left in the program, and we are looking forward to what more we can accomplish through our partnership.”
