Beginning May 30, 2011, the teachers at Eastbridge has been undergoing an in-service training program. Although this is most useful for new teachers of which there are three this school year, the school management also made sure that the senior teachers will also have some new things to learn.
For this year, the school invited one of the best Math teachers of Miriam College to share with our teachers her knowledge on Teaching's Best Practices, with emphasis on Math as a subject. Known for her practical applications in the classroom to make Math meaningful to her students, Ms. Cristy Millete is very popular among her students, including our daughter who happened to be her Math and Homeroom student last school year. As far as I know, she is the first teacher that is able to make my daughter like Math and this mostly through Teacher Cristy's valuing and life-integration discussions after each lesson.
Teacher Cristy started her training by sharing to our teachers numerous fallacies about student learning, motivation & performance vis-a-vis what the researches actually show. A lot of the things she shared this way was really new to most of our teachers and they were real eye-openers. But she did not stop with the theories as she adeptly tackled the practical and most important part of a teacher's job in the second part of her lesson. In this part, she talked about the importance making a difference or an impact in the child's life. In no uncertain terms, she challenged our teachers to learn to love their students more than simply trying to teach them. This coincided with what the school had always emphasized also in our previous teacher trainings.
Teacher Cristy also came with her husband who is a pastor of their church in Novaliches. Pastor Jojo assisted her with the powerpoint slides and also gave an attitude-centered devotional message to kick off the day's training. Ms. Cristy Millete, is a graduate of U.S.T. and has worked as a Math teacher and Academic Coordinator at Fatima College before she joined Miriam in 2002 where she stayed for several years now.
