CHILDREN naturally love stories, especially those whose characters they can easily relate to. Because of this, parents and teachers alike are encouraged to utilize storytelling as their medium of teaching kids. Storytelling has been said to promote meaningful learning and encourage critical thinking.
Because of her love for learning and teaching, one elementary teacher in Laguna is going out of her way to help her students understand their lessons. To better aid students’ appreciation and enjoyment of their otherwise difficult subjects, Teacher Angeline D. Quiatchon of Bitin Elementary School in Bay, Laguna is writing her own stories which are anchored on their current topics for discussion, cutting across several fields.
Driven by poverty to pursue teaching, Ma’am Angie, as her students call her, shared that she has learned how to love her profession that she could not imagine herself now doing anything else. In fact, despite years of teaching kids, she is still excited to go to school every day. Seeing how her students respond to her stories and her style of teaching, she is assured that these kids she considers her own will all have a better future ahead of them.
The Read-to-Succeed Program is an initiative of AP Renewables, Inc. (APRI) in 2017 where teachers and volunteer-employees are trained on creative storytelling. Over 150 students from Grades 1-3 were told stories by team members, and library kits were also donated to sixteen schools in Laguna, Batangas, and Albay to aid teachers and students.
“When I was a kid, I write stories whenever I feel bored. But growing up, I got so busy doing other things that I had to set writing aside. But after undergoing the Read-to-Succeed training facilitated by APRI, my passion for writing rekindled. I started writing again,” Angie said.
Since the program, Angie has already written various stories, one of which she used a piece when she joined the story writing contest in her school. In fact, her story won in Laguna wide story writing contest for teachers last year.
“Storytelling is my way of communicating with my students, of instilling values to them. I don’t want them to just learn the technical aspects of our lessons; I want them to be able to apply in their day-to-day lives the morals of the stories they heard at school,” she added.
Things could get challenging at times, but Angie gets inspiration from seeing her students starting to love reading. She shared how happy she is when they go the reading corner during their breaks and read together.
“It’s an assurance that we’re doing something good for them. And hopefully, they develop this habit of reading and be able to write their own stories too in the future,” she further shared.
Angie is currently on her way to publishing her stories.|- Ronalyn Briones
