Moron, Blando prove mettle in regional press confab

BY PAWIE LINTAG

Marlins clinch best presenters award in PALT Junior Intensives

Charlyz Pia Bognot & The Pioneer AUF

Two Marlin journalists, Yancy Moron and Adrian Poul Blando, brought home awards in the 21st Regional Higher Education Press Conference (RHEPC) held last May 17-19 in Villa Alfredo's Resort, City of SanFernando,Pampanga

Moron participated in the Development Communi-cation Writing (English) and Feature Writing (English) categories and bagged 2nd and 8th places, respectively.

Meanwhile, Blando competed in Development Communication Writing (Filipino) and brought homethe9thplace

Moron and Blando were part of the contingency of The Pioneer, the official university publication, in the said journalism conference.

The Pioneer AUF bagged 14 other awards and was named as the 9th best performing school paper in the region

With the theme "Campus Journalists: Responsive to Digital Siege," the press confabulation was organized by the Association of Tertiary School Paper Advisers of Region III.

Sharing their best outputs from their English language courses, threepre-serviceteachersfromthe Angeles University FoundationCollege of Education (AUF-CED) attendedthePhilippineAssociation for Language Teaching (PALT) JuniorIntensivesheldviaZoomon November25

Of the 11 groups of presenters, Adrian Poul Blando, Pink Penelopy Flores, and Pawie Lintag, led by their adviser Dr Christiandon Aviado, were among the three teams recognized for having the best presentations

The Marlin representatives presented their output entitled "Ready, Set, Teach: A Compendium of Afro-Asian Literary Pieces,” which included their outputs in two of their specializationcourses

Blando,theSportsEditorofthe Teacher'sPen,saidthatjoiningthe said conference and being named as one of the best presenterswassurreal.

"The experience is very enriching As student-teachers, joiningthisconferencegaveusa preview of what teaching looks like,"Blandoadded

Withover400languagemajors from different universities, the student-owned conference aimed to provide an avenue for pre-service teachers to practice and strengthen the participants' competencies in their language teaching through sharing lesson plans, learning activities, projects, andassessments

The other universities that participated in the activity were theUniversityofthePhilippinesDiliman, University of Santo Tomas, Saint Louis University, Mater Dei Academy - Bulacan, andSt.Mary'sUniversity.

The call to replace the K to 12 curriculum has started to make noise again since Senior Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proposed a House bill that would changetheexistingcurriculuminto K+10+2 She claims that the current curriculum failed to achieve its goal ofproducingjob-readygraduates

Under the proposed measure, kindergarten and 10 years of basic education will be retained; however, the remaining two years will not be mandatory After graduating Grade 10, students have theoptiontotakeuptheadditional two years of senior high school (SHS) as preparation for post graduate studies. Arroyo reasons that the Philippines’ poverty incidence is at 18%, hence, young people should be given the choice to graduate sooner to help their parents Apart from this, she also mentioned that the Technical and Vocational (TechVoc) track will be completely scrapped in SHS in the K+10+2curriculum

Iftheonlyreasontopushthisnew curriculum is lack of employability, thenisitnecessarytoproposeanew curriculum? While employability is one of the main goals of K to 12, it remainsthatitisnottheonlyreason why it was passed into law The aim of the K to 12 program was to “provide sufficient time for mastery of concepts and skills, develop lifelong learners, and prepare graduates for tertiary education, middle-level skills development, employment, and entrepreneurship”. In order to solve the issue of lack of employability of Kto12graduates,theadministration should also look at other factors besides replacing the entire curriculum itself such as existing government policies, the primary reasonwhythe