Poetry: fireflies

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Bangtan Herman Notes: RM APEC CEO Summit Series Episode 5: From Consumers to Culture Bearers

The Lighthouse Diary #80: Inquiry and the Library

The 2nd term is the shortest of the four terms in a school year. It also has the most number of school-wide activities and holidays. With midyear exams in December, it is a packed calendar that tests everyone's mettle. We take this in stride in the Academy, but we are fully aware of the timetable and how to make the most of class days amid class suspensions. In light of the tight schedule, teachers still find time to bring their students to the library. It's been a busy term and we're not complaining!

As we move toward the end-of-term exams in three weeks, I'm sharing two stories of our library engagement that made us smile and realize we are doing our part.

PEEL – Point, Evidence, Exploration, Link

Our Grade 8 students explored the structure of an academic essay at the beginning of the term. The English teacher gave them two periods to do research in the library. Prior to this library session, the teacher had explained the task: each student would develop a topic to write about using the PEEL (Point, Evidence, Exploration, Link) framework. To do this, students had to read three printed sources and two online or digital sources.

Armed with their knowledge of using the library’s OPAC, the students worked through the task as my staff and I assisted and supervised. It was interesting to see how they worked, each at his or her own pace and approach. Some were faster than others, while a few needed guidance in searching and selecting sources. The bottom line is, students made full use of the library, from the OPAC to the collection and the staff.

To Smoke or To Vape

A few weeks later, the same class came to the library to develop their PEEL paragraphs. One student was looking for sources on vaping and vapers: what influences them to keep the habit despite its harmful effects on health. Sadly, we had none.

Leading the student to the World Book Encyclopedia and the books we have on smoking, he wondered how these could help him. Our conversation went like this:

Me: What is the difference between smoking and vaping?
Student: They are the same, Miss. The tools are different though, and so is the environment a smoker or vaper builds around himself or herself.
Me: What is the focus of your inquiry?
Student: I want to explore how and why vapers refuse to change.
Me: So it is the nature of addiction that you want to explore.

He nodded. I opened one of the books on smoking and showed him the table of contents.

Me: Can you check and read a chapter that tells you about addiction, behavior, and the habits of smokers? Because if the tools are the only difference between vaping and smoking, you may establish a similarity between the two. And in research, that’s close to what we call a correlation.

It was an aha! moment for the student as he found two chapters on the subtopic in question. 

The next Lighthouse Diary entry will be about our AI journey!

AI Literacy: Boundaries and Limits on AI Use

 

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Bangtan Hermana Notes: To be called, ARMY

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Bangtan Hermana Notes: Singing Beyond Empire

@rkive posted on IG Story the facade of the building where the APEC CEO Summit is held. This is today, October 29, 2025. @rkive, RM, Kpop Idol, Kim Namjoon of BTS, our Leader Nim will deliver a keynote speech. As he stands before the world’s business and political elite at the APEC CEO Summit in Korea, I reflect on the importance and significance of this moment, for South Korea and its management of the arts as an economic force, for countries in Asia that has a history of colonization and imperial influence, and for ARMY a diverse fandom who can approach this milestone with nuance.

At first glance, this might look like another victory for K-culture, another proof that Korean creativity has “made it” into the halls of power. But if we pause and listen with the ears of those who know his story, and the story of Bangtan, we might hear something more radical humming beneath the polite applause and our enormous pride as ARMY.

RM’s presence at APEC unsettles the very logic that built such summits. APEC is a space born of global capitalism and postcolonial hierarchies, where nations compete to sell, to produce, to consume. And here stands an artist whose body of work has long questioned those same systems; an artist who insists that the self is not just a brand, that creativity is not only a just commodity, that love and integrity are forms of resistance.

Through his words and his art, RM redefines what it means to lead, to represent, to succeed. He enters this space not to reinforce empire, but to remind it of its humanity. His talk on “Cultural and Creative Industries in the APEC Region and the Soft Power of K-Culture” invites us to rethink: What if power is not in the market, but in meaning? What if the truest form of growth is not economic, but ethical, relational, and imaginative?

For some of us, ARMYs, those who came to care and to think through their music, this moment is not simply pride in seeing “one of ours” on a global stage. It’s an act of reclamation. RM’s participation gestures toward a decolonial imagination, where artists from the once-colonized world speak not as cultural exports, but as equals shaping discourse, redefining value, and unsettling the West’s monopoly on modernity.

In a summit of CEOs and ministers, RM represents something that cannot be quantified: a people’s longing to be seen and to create freely, beyond the binaries of consumer and producer, colonizer and colonized. He stands not as the product of a system, but as its quiet critique. This is proof that art can inhabit power without surrendering its soul.

And maybe that’s why we, the ARMY who read between the lyrics, are moved. Because in that brief moment on the APEC stage, the story of Bangtan, our seven boys who turned their wounds into wonder, becomes the story of all of us still learning to sing beyond empire.

Apobangpo! Purple and true! 

Library Display: Mental Health Month at the Library

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ARMY of Bangtan Book Club: Basquiat’s Crown, Namjoon’s Voice

I can’t help but smile at the juxtaposition of Basquiat’s crowned dinosaur appearing beside Namjoon as he talks about art in a Samsung Art TV feature. The image feels serendipitous! Basquiat’s bold creature of selfhood meeting BTS’s message of self-love. Both carry that same beat: the courage to be raw, to be seen, to be yourself, even when the world insists otherwise.

Interestingly, Maya Angelou’s poem “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” was published as a picture book with Basquiat’s art. Her fearless verses wrapped in his fierce lines and bold colors. Angelou’s voice, like Namjoon’s, speaks of resilience; Basquiat’s brush, like BTS’s music, insists that vulnerability is power.

Namjoon, BTS, Maya Angelou, and Jean-Michel Basquiat — what a combination! Radical. Revolutionary. And utterly romantic in their shared belief that to live artfully is to live bravely.

Life Doesn't Frighten Me

By Maya Angelou

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all

Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn't frighten me at all.

I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Tough guys fight
All alone at night
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where
Boys all pull my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I'm afraid at all
It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

Poetry: Love in Fragments

 

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Listening to the Hum of the Universe

This October, as we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Month, I shared our story, A Tale of Two Dreams (Lampara, 2013) at my workshop with the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation earlier today. 

It’s about a Mangyan child who dreams of a land he can farm and call home, while his friend dreams of seeing other lands far away. My friend Bernadette Solina Wolf—who illustrated the book—told me during our process of creation: “The Mangyan’s attachment to the land is not ownership. It is who they are.”

Having lived among the Mangyan, she understands the wisdom of our Indigenous people — a wisdom that preceded the knowledge of empire. But conquest came, and when colonial powers divided the land, they broke something deeper than borders: memory, and the knowing that we belong to the earth and are shaped by it. Being colonized meant that belonging turned into ownership, and kinship into control. Yet, the earth has a way of calling us back. 

That call resounds in Frankfurt, through the presence of our artists and storytellers: Rosie Sula, chanting with the Madrigal Singers, Renato Evangelista, carrying the ambahan of the Hanunuo Mangyan — slow, reflective, respectful; Darwin Absari, whose verse bridges Lumad, Moro, and Filipino worlds; and Kidlat Tahimik, our joyful indio-genius, whose films and creations remind the world that imagination thrives even in the power of empire. To reduce this to a mere trade fair is to silence the truth that every chant, every poem, every film born of our soil is already an act of freedom. 

Others call their presence at the Buchmesse as complicity, but it can also be a form of returning. Back to a place called home, before empire drew its lines and built hierarchies. Back to belonging, before ownership replaced kinship. Back to listening to the hum of the universe so we can sing our songs again.

#PHGOH #frankfurtbuchmesse2025 #indigenouspeoplesmonth

Disaster Ready Kids Series at the Frankfurt Buchmesse 2025

 

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Reader Reaches Out: Disaster Ready Kids Series

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Book Review: Mars, May Zombie

Mars, May Zombie! ni Chuckberry J. Pascual, Anino Comics 2022

Ang saya basahin ng librong ito.

Ang tapang ni Lola, Billie, at Mars. Na-deconstruct nila ang stereotype ng elderly at mga LGBTQ+. Hindi sila side characters. Hindi sila punchline. Sila ang bida sa laban.

Habang binabasa ko ito sa waiting room ng Physical Therapy Department, hinihintay ang treatment para sa sciatica, napaisip ako: ganito rin pala ako minsan. Tumatanda na. Pilay pa. Pero, FIGHTING!

Sa pagbabasa ko, naalala ko si Nanay Leony at si Ouie. May kakanyahang tapang na harapin ang mga zombies ng buhay: sakit, takot, pangungulila at panghuhusga. Totoo, hindi mo kailangang maging superhero para maging matapang.Minsan sapat na ang pagmamahal, at ang pagtindig kahit dahan-dahan.

Ito ang aklat na nagbigay sa akin ng lakas ng loob habang nagpapagaling. Ready na sa book 2.

Ang totoo, hindi lang laban sa mga zombie ang kwento nina Mars, Billie, Lola at Mang Nacho. Ito rin ay laban para sa karapatang mabuhay nang may dignidad, para sa karapatang magmahal, para sa karapatang marinig at makilala bilang tao.

Ang presensiya ng mga zombie ay metaphor para sa mga sistemang patay pero patuloy na kumakain: ng lakas, ng pag-asa, ng pagkatao. At sa gitna nito, ang mga characters ni Chuckberry Pascual ay patunay na may tapang sa kabaklaan, may dangal sa pagtanda, at may pag-ibig sa gitna ng dilim. Sa huling pahina ng aklat, nagtapon si Mars ng napakaraming tanong sa kawalan.

Minsan, napapatanong din ako: “Kailan nga ba matatapos ang laban?” Pero naaalala ko ang sabi ng aking kaibigan na si Totet de Jesus (+): “Tuloy lang.” At iyon marahil ang tunay na diwa ng tapang. Ang magpatuloy kahit pa nakakatakot, kahit pa masakit.

Tulad ni Mars, marami akong agam-agam pero ang huli niyang tanong ay nakapagbibigay ng pag-asa.

Maraming salamat @aninocomics at Chuckberry J. Pascual!

#bookreview #bibliotherapy #marsmayzombie

Poetry: Peace in a small patch of wildness

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From Pages to Pixels: When Stories Connect, Heal, and Evolve

 

RAP-REX ILD 2025 SLIDE DECK FOR SPEAKERS by ommagsino

When We Read, We Never Walk Alone: An Interview with Ms. Andrea Posner Sanchez, Editorial Director of Little Golden Book

On October 4, 2025, the ARMY of Bangtan (AoB), in partnership with Fully Booked and Penguin Random House, hosted a joyful book party to celebrate the launch of BTS: A Little Golden Book Biography. Parents and children filled the space with laughter and excitement as they joined games, raffles, and a read-aloud of the beloved children’s book.

For ARMYs, this event marks a milestone worth cherishing. A beautiful moment where two icons meet. BTS and the Little Golden Book series come together to leave both children and adults with a legacy of inspiration, creativity, and love that will last for generations to come.

As AoB’s Bangtan Hermana, librarian, author, and ARMY, I was deeply honored to be given the chance to interview Ms. Andrea Posner-Sanchez, albeit online and through Ms. Jennifer Javier and Rafa Ashraf, of Penguin Random House. 

Ms. Posner-Sanchez is Editorial Director of Little Golden Books. In this interview, Ms. Posner-Sanchez shared the creative process behind bringing BTS: A Little Golden Book Biography to life.

ARMYs, both young and old, will be delighted to learn about the thoughtful decisions and care that went into every page. Readers of all ages will come away inspired, seeing how pop culture can open meaningful avenues for learning, imagination, and connection.

1. What inspired Little Golden Books to include BTS in its iconic biography series, and what does their story bring to young readers that felt essential to highlight?

When considering who to feature in a Little Golden Book Biography, we look for notable and inspiring people from diverse backgrounds. When author Jan Ann suggested BTS, I honestly didn't know much about them aside from the fact that they were enormously popular. I did some research and quickly learned that BTS doesn't just make terrific music. What sold me on the book was watching footage of RM at the UN General Assembly urging young people to "Speak Yourself". That was just one inspiring moment Jan Ann included in her manuscript. Other parts of BTS's story we felt were essential to highlight for our young readers include overcoming obstacles, working together, and not giving up on one's dreams.

2. The Little Golden Book Biography series has featured changemakers, artists, and leaders across history. How does BTS’ inclusion reflect the series’ commitment to introducing children to figures who shape culture?

There is no doubt that BTS has shaped culture! They significantly increased global interest in K-pop and South Korean culture through their relatable music. Their countless Korean-language hits such a Mic Drop, Idol, Spring Day, prove that music transcends language. And they took artist-fan relationships to a whole new level by using social media to directly engage with fans around the world.

3. From an editorial perspective, what were the most important values or messages you wanted to emphasize in the BTS Little Golden Book—especially for children just learning to read?

The members of BTS exhibit so many good qualities that are beneficial for young children to read about. As an editor—and a mom—I especially appreciate how kind, respectful, empathetic, and gracious RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook are.

4. BTS’ journey is deeply rooted in themes of resilience, creativity, and hope. How do you see their story resonating with families and children outside of the fandom?

Everyone loves a success story! Through a combination of talent, hard work, perseverance, and staying true to themselves, BTS overcame challenges as they chased their dreams to become global superstars. Even people unfamiliar with their music can appreciate that.

5. Looking ahead, what role do you think books like this play in bridging popular culture and children’s literature, especially in helping young readers discover joy in reading through the lives of people they admire?

Any book that inspires a child to read is a good book. The more you read, the more you improve your literacy skills. Reluctant readers especially may be more inclined to pick up a book about their favorite actor, athlete, or K-pop group rather than try to read and comprehend an unknown story. Little Golden Book Biographies about pop culture icons are a terrific way to help encourage a love of reading.

So, what are you waiting for? Visit the nearest Fully Booked in your area and get a copy! Read with your child! Shine! Dream! Smile!