Ryan Homan: One Man Literacy Program

Written for EDR 210 (Trends in Reading Instruction), 2nd Sem SY 2017-2018 under Professor Maria Hazelle Preclaro.

            I first met Ryan Homan at the 8th Philippine International Literary Festival (PILF) in 2017. I found his work extremely inspiring and even shed a tear as he presented his different projects. As I was searching for a local initiative that focuses on developing literacy abilities for Filipinos, I remembered Ryan and his amazing projects. I did a quick search for him on Google and discovered that he was all over the news again because he had been nominated for The Global Teacher Prize for the Varkey Foundation. He is truly worthy to receive all the recognition and prizes possible because of the lengths he has gone for Philippine literacy.

Photo from Roman Homan's Facebook Page


Ryan was the one of the first persons in Barangay San Jose, Donsol, Sorsogon to attain a college degree. It became his mission to give this opportunity to extend this dream to other members of his community. He returned to San Jose and began several reading and literacy programs because he felt that literacy was the key and starting point to attaining a better education. He felt that he needed to increase local efforts to implement the Department of Education’s Every Child A Reader Program (ECARP), which aims to equip all Filipino children with reading skills by Grade 3.

The first project (and also the most known of his projects) that Ryan Homan implemented was Balsa-basa. Ryan would take a raft up and down the river on weekends picking up children near their homes and conducting remedial reading lessons by the riverbed all morning. Ryan points out that many children’s trip to school is long and arduous resulting in dropping out. He felt that bringing learning to them in a non-classroom environment would help. He continues to find many ways to make reading fun in his school. He also has a program called Walk for Knowledge wherein teachers and some students take long walks to the houses of other students for remedial classes. Ryan often goes beyond the borders of his village and tries to reach children from neighboring barangays that do not have access to education. He also told us at his talk at the 8th PILF in 2017 that some children cannot come to school because they are helping their parents with livelihood so Ryan Homan takes other students to them and during breaks from work, teaches the less fortunate children how to read. But the program that struck me the most was the home-based reading corners that he initiated. He told us in his presentation in 2017 that his many of the parents of his students were not confident in their literacy skills but wanted to support the reading program.  Ryan Homan helped set up reading corners at home and trained mothers and older siblings to assist the young ones in learning how to read and gaining confidence. These mothers are given recognition along with their children during school events and graduation.

Ryan Homan’s dedication to increasing literacy in his area is very admirable. He believes that increased literacy will help his community become of current events and issues that will affect their community and also the rest of the world. His efforts have been recognized and he has received awards and support from the government and several NGOs.

I can only hope to make as much impact as Ryan Homan has had on his community. But I do promise that I will strive hard to make sure that no child is left behind in my classroom. I see how important Ryan’s work is and it is truly an inspiration. He says if he wins the Global Teachers Prize, he will use the funds from the award to grant college scholarships to those in his community and also that he will take technical courses to further his programs.


Resources:



Barcia, Rhaydz. (2016) No barriers: Kids in far-flung village learn to love reading.
Move.ph, Rappler. Retrieved from:
https://www.rappler.com/moveph/124100-donsol-sorsogon-balsa-basa-program.


Leonen, Julius (2018) Sorsogon’s literacy champion a finalist for the 2018 Global
Teacher Prize. Inquirer.Net. Retrieved from: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/965138/sorsogons-literacy-champion-a-finalist-for-the-2018-global-teacher-prize#ixzz56U4CtWMK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Building a Lesson Plan

Written for EDR 210 (Trends in Reading Instruction), 2nd Sem SY 2017-2018 under Professor Maria Hazelle Preclaro. My first thought upon completing the workshop for LINKS Lesson Plans was “It feels good to be back in the classroom”. The experience further validated my desire to be in a classroom both as a student and a teacher. It has been a long time since I have had to look this closely at a piece of literature and find materials that complement it. I now remember how much I enjoyed it. I learned so much on this assignment, not only about Japan and the atom bomb or teaching in general but I learned about myself as well. Building this lesson plan for A Thousand Paper Cranes brought to my attention how poorly I used to plan my lessons when I was actually teaching. I think I had the basics of working across the curriculum because the program in which I used to teach (Montessori) really preferred that we found connections between the subjects and used literary pieces through...
Read more

Literacy and Engagement

Written for EDR 210 (Trends in Reading Instruction), 2nd Sem SY 2017-2018 under Professor Maria Hazelle Preclaro.             If there is one thing I learned over our past few sessions (though I can assure you that I’ve learned more than one thing), it’s that literacy is a process and not an end goal. The previous activity on engagement just drove that point even deeper for me.             Honestly, The Giving Tree is not one of my favorite stories. I don’t recall reading it as a child but I remember encountering it some time around college and I didn’t like the message of the story. I felt very strongly for the tree and I was quite miffed at the boy. I wondered if I had missed the right age for reading the book because I could not see the appeal and why so many people loved it.             The engagement ...
Read more