As one of the Educational Support Program teachers of Ugat ng Kalusugan (UnK), I recently saw firsthand how the imagination can be sparked. My co-teachers Gabby, Shirene and I had prepared a puppet show for our regular weekday class at Pulang Lupa.

The children were silent as we teachers climbed behind the cover of a white sheet hanging at the front of the classroom. A moment later, the hand puppets Koala Bear, Crocodile, Sheep, Cat, Panda and Owl and Maya Bird appeared, and the story began. By the middle of our show, we started wondering if the students had all left because the room was so quiet! I peeked around the cover to make sure that they were still there. To my surprise, all the students were all in their seats, listening attentively to the various voices of the characters in front of them. They were watching every move of each puppet as if nothing else in the world existed. I happened to witness their awe and how engaged they were and I will always remember the happiness painted on their faces.

After the puppet show we showed the students how to make origami owls. The kids loved turning a little piece of paper into an animal. They were so proud of themselves they even boasted about their work to each other. “Ang ganda-ganda ng gawa ko, oh, tingnan mo!” (Look at my work, it’s so beautiful!)

After the lesson while we were packing up a few of the children jumped behind the ‘set’ and started re-enacting the play with their origami owls, some parts word-for-word.  They were having so much fun; we didn’t have the heart to stop them even though we had to lock up the room. In a world where entertainment is usually something you watch, these children had discovered the joy of creating their own.

Seeing the kids in Pulang Lupa learn new things and discover their own abilities has really inspired me as a teacher. Their joy and excitement in learning has made me want to work harder and inject more love and passion into my teaching.

Every week Shirene, Gaby and I do our best to make all our sessions exciting and interesting for these kids. We refer back to the goal and mission of the organization and our curriculum objectives to keep the lessons appropriate. We share our ideas and lesson plans with Marcus, who encourages us to think critically about our teaching, about the lesson plans and about the students. Each week, we sit down and reflect on the lessons and think about how to improve on what we did. We also share information about the students so that we can all do our best to help them achieve academic success. It’s not easy as the levels of the students are so varied and their attention spans are rather short, but we do our best. And we continue working as hard as we can to help the kids succeed.

If you are interested in volunteering and helping us teach the children at Pulang Lupa, email us at evetha@rootsofhealth.org, info@rootsofhealth.org, or text us at 0939 252 1745. Classes are every Tuesday and Thursday, 9-10:30 AM and every Saturday, 9-11:00 AM and 1-3:00 PM.