According to ABS-CBNnews.com, the Supreme Court has voided the laws creating the cities of Batac in Ilocos Norte; Tabuk in Kalinga; Tayabas in Quezon; Baybay in Leyte; Catbalogan in Samar; Borongan in Eastern Samar; Guihulngan in Negros Oriental; Bogo, Naga and Carcar in Cebu; Tandag in Surigao del Sur; Cabadbaran in Agusan del Norte; El Salvador in Misamis Oriental; Mati in Davao Oriental; Bayugan in Agusan del Sur; and, Lamitan in Basilan.

Just recently, Local Government officials of Alabel were quite confident that our municipality’s income and land area would already ensure its cityhood in accordance with the requisites stated in the Local Government Code of the Philippines (RA 7160). What they missed, as did officials of the sixteen cities, was the amendment to Section 450, which is RA 9009.

The ammendment raised the local income requirement from P 20 M to P 100 M for the last two years. The primer produced by the Alabel Cityhood Task Force (ACT), declared that Alabel earns over P 100 M in the last years. However, it includes the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) downloaded from the National Government. What the law refers to as income requirement is locally generated income, excluding the IRA.

Without the IRA, our humble town earns only around P 20 M says Vice-Mayor Salarda in an interview on TV Patrol SoCSKSarGen. That disqualifies our town from becoming a city anytime soon. The only hope our officials are clinging to is the fact that ours is Sarangani’s capital town and the province has no component city yet.

As I see it, it’s a game of IRA. City Mayors are happy that the sixteens cities were reverted back to municipality status because they have fewer co-sharers of their IRA. Each year, the law provides that 23% of the National Governement will be shared among cities. Since there are only fewer cities compared to municipalities, each city will receive bigger IRA than towns.

I don’t know what are the next steps that our local officials here are planning to do. But as I see it, teh law shall prevail. I think we will have to wait until our municipality can quadruple its local income. I wonder when our town could achieve that. Or, will it ever? I hope I don’t sound so pessimistic here. Realistic, maybe.

Classes were suspended and schedules were changed to ensure the safety of the students. But it was worse in areas that were greatly affected, like the towns of Maasim, Kiamba, and Maitum, people were displaced, many got ill, and even some have died.

But we are very thankful that the tension had ceased. Peace has been restored. In fact, the province is gearing up for the celebration of its 16th Foundation Anniversary and 6th MunaTo Festival last week of November. Also, the whole island of Mindanao is celebrating the Mindanao Week of Peace.

The best way to celebrate peace, however, is not through attending parties and merriment. I think, we can better celebrate the peace that we are experiencing by sharing  what we have with others. Those families that were affected by the conflict are, at the moment, still struggling to get back to their normal lifestyles. A lot of them cannot even meet their basic necessities.Good thing, there is Balik Kalinaw Sarangani (BKS).

Balik Kalinaw (Peace Restoration) is a joint response of the Provincial Government of Sarangani, the Sarangani Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), and the Conrado and Ladislawa Alcantara Foundation (AF) to the current crisis affecting Sarangani and Mindanao.

You can give your donations and any help you can extend to help BKS attain its objective through its website. Your Php 200.00 can already help one family for a day. There are about 762 families affected. Helping one can make a big difference.

Visit Balik Kalinaw to find out ways to help.

First, the rain. Did it rain here the whole week? I almost feel like I’m in Forks. (Haha. Watch Twilight the Movie at the theater near you on November 21 November 26.) Our school grounds, which is already swampy, now looks like a lake. I’ve always arrived home drenched and chilling because the local trike here doesn’t offer enough protection from the rain.

Second, I felt so tired the whole day even if I didn’t have much activities. In fact, I postponed my class activities. And well, the students were busy with their researches. And that leads to the third and the very reason why I call this day, a Freaky Friday.

The very reason why this day is not like the other days is that we had to face an ordeal. A very odd ordeal indeed. The students prepared freaky food!

Can you imagine the taste of banana peelings made into burger patty? Banana peelings of all things! How about horseraddish pancake? Jackfruit seed jam? Pomelo rind shake? Banana and cabbage shake?

They made us taste all these food stuff thought up by the students in one of their subjects. They’re supposed to come up with nutritious concoctions that are affordable. They had us evaluate their products accoding to its overall acceptability. Some were really good and some were really freaky. And to top them all is this think-of-all-edible-fruits-and-vegetable juice presented by two hesitant sophomores:

These girls concocted a drink that consist juices from various fruits like, mango, apple, and pineapple, and vegetables like carrot and horseraddish, and stuff like that. Truth be told, I couldn’t recall what else it contained.	Of course, not having a choice, I drank it…and found it great tasting!

Initially, I introduced it to my fourth year students as part of an action research I am doing. I am developing a system of rules in administering a virtual classroom in the context of teaching Physics to average and above average Filipino students.

Last June, I started studying Moodle, a CMS/portal purposely designed for online classrooms. However, I find it too complicated for me as well as for my students. Although Moodles boasts of more educational support features, it’s way too complex.

With the simplicity of blogging using Wordpress, I finally decided to build a blog, which will support the learning of my students.

Here’s what I wrote in the About page of our online classroom:

The Alabel National Science High School Online Physics Classroom is a constructivist approach in teaching Physics by employing ICT. This website contains learning activities linked to flash simulations, java applets, animations, images, and online readings. The exploration of which will help them develop their own construct of the physics concepts in accordance with the learning competencies identified by the Department of Education.

This is designed to support—not to replace—classroom instruction and laboratory activities.

Through this project, I will be able to assess the effect of the use of ICT as learning support on the academic achievement of my student. The outcome may not be very conclusive as there are many other factors to consider but definitely, this is one good start in achieving my objects.

My junior students are currently building websites on various areas of Physics. When their projects are done, we can integrate them in our Online Physics Classroom, and we will see what else can do about it. Hopefully, not trying to make self-fulfilling prophesy, our Online Physics Classroom will help raise our performance rating in National Achievement Examinations.

I am not yet announcing the url of our online classroom here as it is still on its development stage. By February, hopefully, we can formally launch it with the preliminary result of our action research.

But these days, I tell you, I’m enjoying it here. There is really no place like home.

When I went home from Marbel, I was surprised too see my bedroom so clean and orderly. I don’t like a messy surrounding but with the load of tasks on my shoulders, I couldn’t even stack the sheets of paper on my desk without them toppling over whenever I’m in search for something. But last Friday, my room looked different. My trash bin has been emptied, my books piled neatly on my bedside table, my shoes arranged on the shoe rack, my whole room tidied up.

My sister did that for me.

On the other hand, my mother would always want to help in the house chores but she always messed up. I love mother even if she could get some things right. I was late to school this morning because she volunteered on the ironing board only to leave a black mark on my polo in the contours of our electric iron. I just gave my mother a warm hug who was very apologetic and finally coming up with a ready-made embroidery to patch it up. Of course, I wouldn’t let her do that. I just told her that the patching might cost more that the polo itself.

And just right now, she prepared a glass of warm milk for me. It’s perfect comfort while rain pours outside.

Because I really love it here nowadays, to please my people here at home, I bought a small Christmas tree, a thing last seen at home more than a decade ago. It sure lifts up the alreay lively spirit at home. My nieces and nephews, a great bunch of them, wrapped gifts (empty gifts) which are now place under the christmas tree.

It is this home that keeps my sanity.

Have a blessed day, everyone!

GenSantos.com is celebrating its 1st Anniversary and the blogger is running a contest!

I have never met a person as passionate about blogging as Mr. Bariles, or Sir Avel, as I personally know him. He was still on blogspot when I first visited his blog. I used to frequent his old blog for the great pictures he was posting back then. We used to exchange comments and finally, arranged for a meeting at Coffee Club 101– with other bloggers in the area — that brought to life the SoCCSKSarGen Bloggers group.

From then on, Sir Avel had always been eager to improve his blog. I could see his vision, that only he, Mr. Bariles, could realize. Today, he owns a blog that is one of the country’s Ten Most Influential Blogs.

Mr. Bariles’ passion did not end there. He convinced us that the 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit be held in GenSan. I thought it was very ambitious, but you’ve seen how successful it had been.

So, happy blogoversary to GenSantos.com! Wishing you more success in the future! An ASEAN Bloggers Summit, maybe?

I was prompted to write a new post when I learned that one of my friends, Michael Crichton died of cancer at the age of 66. Crichton is the best-selling author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, among others, and multi-awarded creator of the TV drama, ER.

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I am also now closer to books I love. I can now read books while on the go through my phone. Read about it on Journeys to the Soul.

i wish I can update my Book Blog more often.

We are here for the Regional Super Quiz Bee. I hope we can make it to the national level this time.

Right now I’m blogging from Lambat Sa Ciudad, a resto here. We are having dinner. It feels good to be here again, the place which used to absorb all my stress in my not so distant past.

Good day, everyone!

I can now check my mail, connect with friends via IM, surf the web, and update this blog! My phone actually doesn’t support Gmail but I downloaded a mobile software that now allows me to access my Gmail account, anytime, anywhere.

I am using Globe INET, which charges me Php 5.00 per 15 minutes. That’s Php 20 per hour. I am quite satisfied with the connection speed. Maybe, I just didn’t have high expectations, taking note that I’m here in the province.

The downside of Globe’s GPRS service is that, if your connection is interrupted before your 15-minute surfing time ends, you have to pay the full 15-minute’s worth of GPRS connection. The default scheme is per kilobyte, I think its Php 0.15 per kb. That’s too expensive. That means more Php 100 per 1MB download. To shift to the time scheme, text TIME to 1111 for free.

I am using Opera 4.1 browser, which I downloaded from mobiles24.com for free. It’s faster than my phone’s built-in browser. I also downloaded plenty of other mobile software, games, and themes from the site. It’s time that we empower our phones. Haha.

Bottom line, cheap phones can feel like a high-end one, too!

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Munato’s Here!

BY THE way, Sarangani’s Munato Festival is fast approaching. I hope I will have time to post updates about this event. Visit THIS SITE for the schedule of events.

When I was still a student teacher, I couldn’t seem to appreciate the Law of Rewards thinking that it only works on kids. But now that I’m a teacher, it seems to have found its significance.

Last week, we had our mid-year performance review and evaluation. We did loads of work that we almost never slept for the whole week. But on Thursday and Friday, our activity was interrupted because we were asked to attend a seminar–and we found something dubious there. Think of how rampant corruption is in this part of the world.

And we never had the break that we expected to have. We’re humans and we need some breather but we were never granted that.

Last Monday, we we’re back on business-as-usual mode. But we were greeted with some negative vibes that we were humiliated in from of the students.

Just one question, is that the kind of treatment that we, hardworking teachers, deserve? Motivate me to continue lovng my job here.