In teaching, it is not enough to know what you’re teaching. It is on this day that I realized how important it is to consider where you’re teaching and who are you teaching. The location does not only include the address but the whole life of the community or the indigenous group in the community. The lesson needs to be to the community as well as from the community.
January 26, 2023 is our third seminar for our preparation for deployment and on this day, Dr. Marianne Eugenio led us in the world of contextualization. In this lecture, we were taught the difference of localization and indigenization as well as their importance in the teaching world. When you adapt the context to the community, you localize and when you adapt the context from the community, you indigenize. She mentioned how it could be hard for teachers to indigenize and I agree.
As part of an indigenous group, I once had a substitute teacher in elementary from a farther region and when he began to teach, I noticed how he is trying to associate the lesson to our culture and lifestyle but failed because in reality, it is not our lifestyle. We don’t start our day going to the fields to get some food, and now that I realized the huge difference despite being almost similar, I feel like I’m step ahead in my knowledge because I just learn something new.
It is vital to make the students relate to the lesson and to make them understand it in a way that they can apply it in real life and in their own life in their community. As a future educator, I don’t hold my future in my hands and I am not sure whom I will be assigned so it is important that I not only will educate them but also educate me.
An entry of a Student-Teacher 