“I am but a small voice, but a big dream”

Beryl Manching

A SCHOOL is not a four-cornered wall where you sit the whole day and just listen to your teacher. Instead, a school is a playground, a big happy family, a second home. A school watches how you grow into a learned person. It helps you find your own voice in a world where all the noise may drown it. But most of all, a school listens to you with the ear of its heart.

There is this new school in Lapulapu City that espouses such concept into the heart of their curriculum. The philosophy of Dr. Caridad C. Labe Education CentrEx (or shortly known as CCL CentrEx) in molding its pupils is that “the excellently developed whole person has a well-balanced integrated and harmonized body, mind, heart and spirit with five basic needs—to live, to learn, to love, to earn, and to live in abundance—and to leave a legacy.” These needs correspond to five intelligences—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and wealth quotient—which manifest in the areas of discipline, vision, passion, conscience and abundance.

In the process of developing, integrating and balancing these intelligences to their highest manifestations, the school achieves its purpose: to let the synergy between them light the fire within those children and to find their voices.

A conducive and unique home for learning

With the vision of “Building the Visionary Value-Driven and Excellantly Balanced Whole Person Leader and Entrepreneur’s Great Tomorrow Today,” CCL CentrEx materialized these words in every possible way.

If you expect it to have typical white-walls and square rooms, it’s actually not the case. For when you get in you will notice at once the vibrant colors and murals painted on its walls. As if to let older people wish they were kids again, a playing area paved with rubber mats greets you from the front door. If you walk through the lobby and peep into the rooms, you will see a lot of cute drawings hung on a string for everyone to see. And if you pay close attention, you will notice their unique-shaped tables which, when connected with other tables, will form big, different shapes—like a large colorful puzzle.

Experience-based learning

“If it’s possible to bring a dog to school, then why not?” founder Dr. Labe said when she talked about how experiential learning is used in the teaching process. It is not enough that children (especially very young ones) read about a dog from the book or see its picture. According to Teacher Kath, they have to see it first-hand, observe how it moves, know what it eats and count how many legs it has. If you think of it, it’s science and math in one. This practical way, kids do not only learn what a dog is. They also enjoy get to enjoy the experience of brushing its fur, feeding it, playing with it, and feel the gladness of having a pet.

Pupils in the higher grade were once given a design squad activity where they have to make rubber band cars. All materials were there, but the twist is that no procedure was given. It is up to the children to discover effective and creative ways to deliver the output. For in the end performance will be the key indicator. This is discovery learning at its best.

Let the kids do the talking

The way to take kids out of their shells is to let them do the talking. Whatever they see, whatever opinion they have about a story, a child’s voice must be heard. For it is in listening to them that they feel at ease with expressing themselves and communicating with others, at the same time learning a language. It takes away the shyness and replaces it with confidence, and from there you will have a child strongly able to interact with others. This is the difference that philosopher and educator John Dewey said about having to say something and having something to say.

Personalized teaching

In the traditional classroom setup where students are treated as if everyone had the same learning curve, some advanced students may be bored with waiting for a more challenging lesson, while others may be too pressured to catch up. In CCL CentrEx, because there are only 15 students in a class, the teachers are able to follow up each and every pupil’s progress and measure his learning pace. The school strongly believes that every child is different and uniquely gifted, and each should be respected for what he is. Learning is personalized according to every child’s rate of learning, just in harmony with its skill-based approach. That is why the children may have different homework from one another.

Learning must be fun

As young and curious about their world as four-year-olds are, kids in CCL Centrex are always shown that ‘learning is always fun and exciting.’ The teachers will never run out of something new, something fun and exciting in order to get the child’s full focus and attention on learning the subject matter. Games, field trips, storytelling activities, art workshops and the like are conducted every now and then, depending on their theme. And what’s more, even entrepreneurship at such an early age is taught. Yes, they do simple accounting and know how to sign requisition slips—something we usually learn only in college.

Who is to say that learning could at this time evolve from a limited interaction into one as fun and exciting like CCL’s? Perhaps if every child knew what adventures await him at school, every child would be interested to study. Perhaps if every parent knew how his/her child could be excellently honed, every parent would come home from work excited to listen to how his child’s day went. And perhaps every older person who hadn’t witnessed this done before, when he sees all these, would certainly wish to be a child again.

In CCL CentrEx, where success is a habit and excellence a goal, these “perhaps” are ensured to be concretely transformed into a certainty. With a powerhouse of impassioned, intelligent, talented and committed teachers, CCL CentrEx is sure to deliver what it promises—to be the second home of the holistically well-balanced and versatile child of vision, passion, discipline, conscience, and a high wealth conscience.

Sure enough, their pupils whose voices are now heard will very soon learn how to truly listen well to others. And very soon, there will come a time when these little voices shall sing their dreams to reality and make significant contributions to his family and his country.