Bela in Special Programs Class

Last August 28, I took a leave from work to watch Bela’s Linggo ng Wika program and at the same time to attend the meeting with the Special Programs Coordinator of the school. This meeting has been postponed twice already because of the cancellation of classes due to the typhoon so I am really looking forward to it as I really want to know about the Special Programs that they are offering for the students who are non-Tagalog speakers.

As per Ms. Flory, the Special Programs Coordinator head, they recommend to put Bela in the Special Programs class as she is having difficulty with her Filipino subjects. Here is how the program was set up:

• Those who will be under this program will be pulled out from class during their Filipino subject and they will attend instead the special programs class

• The class will be composed of students belonging to the same section only and will not be mixed with higher-level students. In Bela’s class, 3 of them will attend special programs.

• Under this program, they will be taught Filipino starting with the basics so they will become well versed with the language.

• All worksheets that will be given to Bela for Filipino will be coming from the Special programs teacher who will also give a grade for Bela at the end of each quarter.

• At the end of the year, Bela will be evaluated to determine if she still needs to attend the Special Programs class for another year.

• Each student can only attend Special Programs for a maximum of 2 years so Ms. Flory suggest that Bela will receive guidance on Filipino as early as now when her brain is still like a sponge so she can easily absorb whatever will be taught and hopefully will learn how to speak Filipino soon.

• There is a fee of P5000 for the whole year, as they will be getting a special teacher to conduct the program.

We decided to move Bela under this program. We are hoping that with this program, she will learn how to speak Filipino soon specially since they will be taught starting from the basics. My friend also suggested that I availed of this program for Bela as this will be good for her self confidence which might be affected if she continues to stay in the regular class and fall behind than the Tagalog speakers.

My husband and I are really hoping that we will see improvements with her soon and that she will not have to attend a special programs class for the next school year.