Welcome to HVWSHE

Aurora Aragon Quezon Elementary School (AAQES), which is located in San Andres St, Malate Manila, sits on an 11,712.9-square-meter lot. It has 78 instructional classrooms, including science, home economics and livelihood education, and computer laboratories. Likewise, it has 12 non-instructional classrooms such as library, clinic, canteen, and administrative office.

There are 155 AAQES teachers who are committed to providing basic education to the 5,747 schoolchildren from Grades I to VI including kindergarten and SPED. These schoolchildren come from the different backgrounds.

Built in 1904, AAQES used to be known as San Andres Primary School. It became a complete elementary school in 1926. By virtue of resolution No. 426 approved by the Municipal Board on September 28, 1951, San Andres Elementary School was renamed Aurora A. Quezon Elementary School in honor of Doña Aurora Aragon Quezon, former First Lady of the Philippines during the Commonwealth period and Mother of the Philippine National Red Cross.

Before the project was introduced, there are only 10 functional comfort rooms and several faucets to cater the school children. Each comfort rooms has a drum-filled with water to keep the cubicles for flushing and maintaining cleanliness of the area.

At present, the school has 18 functional comfort rooms separate from boys and girls with sic cubicles each room and enough faucets to sustain the needs of the pupils.

In 2005, the project was formally introduced to the principal and teachers of AAQES by Superintendent Ma. Luisa Quiñones, right after she attended a seminar-workshop in Bangkok, Thailand where the topics on human values-based water, sanitation, hygiene and education were discussed.

Upholding their school’s image as an awardee (“Most Effective Public Elementary School in 2003”), the principal and the teachers embraced the challenge and felt proud when they learned that the school was selected as one of the three pilot schools in the Philippines to implement the project on the integration of human values-based water, sanitation and hygiene in the curriculum.

Sans the well-developed and approved lesson plans, the teachers revealed that the concept of integration had already been done subliminally in various subjects such as Science, GMRC, HEKASI, and Makabayan prior to the formal introduction of the project at AAQES. In fact, they believed that as teachers, doing so is a “natural thing”. In Science for instance, the importance of conserving water is integrated in topics such as Water Cycle, Plants, Changes of Matter, Living Things, and Body Parts. In EPP, specifically on the topic Health and Inspection, the importance of hygiene and sanitation are tackled. Most of the integration efforts were done during sessions such as sharing of personal experiences and lessons learned related to the topic being discussed.

Just like the other projects previously implemented by the school, they initially conducted orientations with the parents, barangay officials, PTCA board, and education coordinating councils. The said orientation was aimed at creating awareness about the project as well as generate support from these stakeholders.

Aside from the orientation, they also developed lesson plans using the Alternative Learning System (ALS) modules as reference which they borrowed from the ALS Services. The school also invited education supervisors in Filipino, Science, and English from the National Capital Region to conduct demonstration teaching using the newly-developed lesson plans.

The strategies implemented to create awareness about the project among the students, school personnel and parents included posting of signages which remind them to: use toilets properly, turn off faucets after use, report leaking faucets, throw waste properly, segregate wastes, and turn thrash into cash.

The principal and the teachers’ openness in embracing any kind of challenge, plus the institutional values being religiously followed within the school which they called SERVICE can be attributed to the smooth implementation of the project. Service stands for service-oriented school (s), enrichment for quality learning (e), relevance in education (r), values for moral development (v), innovation for progress (i), commitment to goals (c), and excellence in: innovative ideas, delivery of programs and interpersonal relationship (e).

The project also served as advocacy and mobilization strategies to get support from government agencies and local government officials. The principal for instance, sent letters to various partners informing them that the school is currently implementing the project and reasoned out that one of the critical elements towards better implementation is the need to repair and rehabilitate some of the school’s comfort rooms. The initiative yielded positive results. Thus, the Office of the Mayor and the DepED visited all the schools in Metro Manila and checked on the conditions of the comfort rooms. Consequently, the repair and rehabilitation of AAQES comfort rooms were done through the funding from the national government through the office of Mayor Alfredo S. Lim and the Countrywide Development Fund of Congressman, Amado Bagatsing. Meanwhile, the Manila Health Department under the Office of the Mayor continuously gets water samples from the schools for testing.

Since some of the integration activities done prior to the formal project introduction were not documented and the need to follow certain standards like having lesson plans as part of the integration, the teachers considered lack of materials as one of the challenges during the initial stage of the project.

Using their resourcefulness and creativity, the teachers were able to address this particular problem by developing lesson plans using available ALS resources and tapping subject supervisors for further enhancement of the newly-developed lesson plans.

The teachers were grateful when they received the resource material from the project even though some of the lesson plans included required some modifications, specifically on the suggested materials to be used and its appropriateness to other localities.

The students became more aware and conscious about the importance of water. This was manifested in the following:

Getting enough water to drink to minimize wastage
Taking a bath over a basin and using the used water for flushing the toilet
Reporting leaking faucets
Flushing the toilet in three (Students are encouraged to go to the toilet by group of three to minimize frequent flushing of toilets)

The students have improved their use of toilets by washing their hands after every use.

The teachers attributed the resourcefulness and creativity of their principal as the main factors that made the project successful.

The principal’s initiative by using the project as advocacy and mobilization tool to get support from various sectors proved beneficial not only to the school but more importantly to the children.

To successfully launch a project, the various stakeholders should be participants. The school administration and teachers were in the right direction when they involved local officials, PTCA, and other stakeholders during the conduct of project orientation.

DepED to come out with the policy on the integration of human values-based, sanitation and hygiene education in the curriculum.

The project implementation should be expanded to cover more schools.

More teachers should be trained from other schools.

There is a need to conduct orientations and training for administrators and supervisors.

Explore the possibility of having a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) among possible project sponsors, business sector, civil society, local government units, and other education stakeholders.

Revision, production and distribution of the resource materials to be distributed in the field.