Teacher on Center Stage: Teacher Mary Rose Lagunsad

Because it's Teacher's Month, the blog is featuring another teacher who goes beyond the call of duty. Teacher Mary Rose "Marose" Lagunsad is a grade school teacher in Bitik Elementary School in Valenzuela City. If she is not in the classroom, she trains colleagues and peers to become better teachers. She supports many literacy groups one of them is the Pinoy Reading Buddies. Read on and get to know Teacher Marose and her advocacy.

If I were not a teacher...

If I were not a teacher, I would be a journalist who writes about peace education, reading intervention and literacy advocacy, environmental concerns and relationships. 

What do you love most about teaching?
 
Over the years, I feel extremely fulfilled and grateful whenever my pupils’ potentials unfold before my eyes. Seeing how they journey toward their dreams year after year gives me that assurance that I made the right choice of vocation after all. What seemed to be impossible for a child at the beginning of the year becomes “I’m possible” come the last two quarters. If I could be there to guide them as they sparkle on their own and at their own pace would mean I am on the right track in my mission. 

Describe to the blog's readers the Picture Walk strategy in teaching and learning how to read.
 
Mam Rowena Jimenez, our Founder, Executive Director of Pinoy Reading Buddies (PRB), is  one of our beloved mentors has this to say about the PRB Picture Walk Component: "Picture Reading" or picture talk (instead of book talk) is being used naturally by emergent readers. As a component of the Pinoy Reading Buddies Program, the PRB Picture Walk is meant for older, struggling readers. 

It is more deliberate than the natural inclination to talk about the pictures. One main difference is we get our kids to pause and summarize what the story is about from the beginning -- to get them very familiar with the narrative structure: "What happened first? Then what came next? Then what happened?” and so on... until they retell verbally the whole story they conjured up simply by looking at the pictures. 

Young emergent readers simply talk about each picture --they may skip some--and they don’t worry about creating a complete story. Of course, it may be used by other teachers. We're just hoping that they see it the way we do --and use it the way we do - as part of the 4-component program called the PRB Reading Buddies program. 

Tell us something more about Pinoy Reading Buddies.
 
Pinoy Reading Buddies is student driven literacy intervention where learners collaborate to improve their thinking and decoding skills. It is a Non-Stock, Non-Profit Organization, founded by Rowena Jimenez, a Filipino teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and a group of other Filipino immigrants and Americans whose mission is to help build a nation of engaged Filipino readers. 

PRB has partner schools in a number of cities, municipalities and provinces all over the country. These partner schools practice the PRB Method through the aid of teacher volunteers who have been trained on the Four Components of the program. These training workshops as well as boxes of donated gently used storybooks from PRB book drives in the US are provided free. 

For more information, please like the Pinoy Reading Buddies official facebook fan page and visit the PRB website at pinoyreadingbuddiesweb.wordpress.com