Catch-up Flydays?

Catch-up Flydays? | Daily Tribune

The haste by which the Department of Education, or DepEd, launched its Catch-up Fridays program can be deduced from the fact that the agency issued the memorandum rolling it out only on 10 January, or just two days before its implementation.

Naturally, the abrupt start of the program meant to address learning gaps among grade school and high school students, who are emerging from the pandemic saddled with the learning challenges it brought about, caught teachers and students off guard.

Issues that cropped up in schools with the rollout of Catch-up Fridays were dismissed offhand as mere birth pains to be expected in dedicating every Friday of the whole school year to reading (first half of the day) and lessons on values, peace, and health (remainder of school hours).

In the memorandum, DepEd ordered all schools nationwide to set the National Reading Program in motion with catchy phrases like “Drop Everything and Read or DEAR” and “Read-A-Thon.” Likewise, the Homeroom Guidance Program was included in the initiative.

DepEd maintained that the program would actualize the intent of the basic education curriculum by strengthening the “foundational, social, and other relevant skills” that students must acquire by being voracious readers.

Teachers quickly found out that they would require students to read supplementary materials, and some, according to recent reports, have taken to making money by selling those reading materials to their wards, something which DepEd said it is investigating.

Early on, teachers took on the challenge of making reading more exciting and appetizing so that the attention and interest of students in reading would be sustained, which is not an easy task since the idea is for students to do nothing else.

“For us who have students classified as frustration readers, this is a positive way to focus our efforts on them and properly guide them on how we can improve their reading skills. Instead of extending for one to two hours for remedial classes, we can do it for a whole day during Fridays,” a Philippine Information Agency media release quoted one teacher in Laguna.

It’s too early to pass judgment on DepEd’s Catch-up Fridays, which groups pupils according to their reading abilities, namely, as independent readers, who need little supervision; instructional readers, who need some guidance in absorbing materials; and frustrated readers, or those who can hardly read.

As the program is about enhancing students’ reading skills, teachers have been given the leeway to use integrative approaches in their teaching, whereby the contents of their learning area serve as catalysts to develop reading skills.

As made evident by the program’s name, inclusivity is the objective in that no students would be left behind in acquiring the reading skills that serve as the foundation of learning. That’s the theory, at least.

The problem is reports of widespread absenteeism by both learners and teachers, including the sub-set of pupils that the program is targeting, the so-called “frustration readers” who require tutorial or close supervision.

For the “independent readers” and “instructional readers,” some mentors have taken to just requiring them proof they are reading, like by sending pictures at their homes while “reading.” What happens after the photo shoot is anybody’s guess, especially if Call of Duty calls, or the bed three steps away from the study table beckons.

Foremost among the questions being asked by many parents is: Are we not wasting one whole day — Friday — in an enterprise that may not really result in poor readers catching up, while those who are proficient readers are deprived of an actual learning day — with teachers actually teaching?

DepEd maintains that it conducts monitoring and has feedback mechanisms with field implementers, adding their inputs and providing the agency with the basis for technical assistance.

Education in the country has been reeling from one failed experiment to another. The so-called Matatag Curriculum of DepEd is just another proof that the K-12 Program, which supposedly would create employable people from high school graduates, was ill-conceived and needed overhauling.

How about this Catch-up Flydays, errr Fridays? Are we not encouraging Friday sickness from both teachers and students? If so, that would be a waste of one school day.