Regalo: The Christmas Album

Singing Your Way This Holiday Season!

Los Baños, Laguna -- Seeing the need for children's songs that are up-to-date and reflect the sentiments of Filipinos, ARTIST Inc's children's performance arm, CLAP, together with Kalantog, will be launching its first-ever Christmas Album entitled Regalo on December 9, 2012.

It was late 2009 when the creation of songs for the album began. Edward Perez, Executive Director of ARTIST Inc, started collaborating with Kalantog for the creation of songs for arts and performances training of children from various elementary schools. The songs were later on developed towards a more focused theme that most Filipino children can relate to -- Christmas. 

Featuring  14 all-Filipino original songs, the album Regalo talks about Filipino children, their families, their communities and the society & culture which they belong to. It is the second album created under the joint forces of Children's Literature, Arts & Performances (CLAP) and Kalantog.

The album launch will be held at 3pm this coming Sunday, at the office of ARTIST Inc at 2558 Carbern Village, Anos, Los Baños, Laguna. Come and join us! Admission is free.

Abangan sa Hitik sa 25!

Byaheng Luzon

Dap-Ayan Sa Lusong

'Sang Taga-LB

Teachers Revisit Theater Techniques for K to 12

BAGUIO CITY—High school students may have realized they were missing a few teachers on the day the new school year officially opened on Monday.

Those 150 teachers were at the Teachers’ Camp here to take a weeklong crash course in a lesson plan strategy that uses theatrical techniques and other performing arts.

“Using the arts to teach something as basic as math and science has been proposed before. But now that we have more school years for elementary and high school, policy-makers are willing to give it a shot again,” said Eduardo Perez, vice president of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) committee on the dramatic arts, who led the weeklong “Sanayang Guro.”

These teachers were exposed to painting, digital film making, theatrical performances and creative writing, principally to help them in handling subjects covered by the special program in the arts (SPA), which the Bureau of Secondary Education had designed for talented and specially skilled teenagers in the provinces, Perez said.

But the sessions also allows the Department of Education (DepEd) and the NCCA to measure the teachers’ creativity, which may help them express facts about math, science and language that today’s students can comprehend, he said.

Perez is drafting a book, initially titled, “Malikhaing Guro: Pedagogy of Heritage Culture,” which advocates the use of folk art, myths and other artistic legacies of a community in presenting mathematical formulas or a scientific theory.

In the Philippine High School for the Arts, for example, teachers have been known to use details of a folk tale like “Mariang Makiling” to explore a math problem, he said.

“We can illustrate the Pythagorean Triangle by measuring the sides of Mt. Makiling, which used to be a maiden according to legend,” he said.

Adapting to the culture of today’s youths also helps teachers approach a lesson topic better, he said.

Math professor, Priscilla Supnet-Macansantos, former chancellor of the University of the Philippines Baguio, and her husband Francis Macansantos, shared writing techniques with high school teachers on Tuesday.

But they were soon engaged in a discussion about the morality and philosophy of American James Cameron’s blockbuster movie, “Avatar,” which the teachers described as an adult fable popular among students.

Perez said today’s youths engage in word play called “flip top” or “pickup lines,” which are in reality metaphors that take the place of the old Balagtasan.

“Teachers [should] know how to use [pickup lines] to [discuss a subject matter],” he said.

He said DepEd’s decision to implement a longer period for basic education, called K to 12, was meant to unearth “gray areas” on the road to improving basic education.

For example, the K to 12 program now requires DepEd and the NCCA to formulate an SPA curriculum now that high school has been converted into a four-year junior high school program (Grades 7 to 10) and a two-year senior high school program (Grades 11 to 12), Perez said.

The SPA program used to be treated as an elective, and government had no formal rules on how SPA pupils were selected, or tracking them down after graduation to see how the lessons impacted on their careers, he said.

Consulting artists and educators have already prepared a draft six-year SPA curriculum to cover changes introduced by the K to 12 program, he said.

According to Perez, an alternative teaching methodology like “Malikhaing Guro” addresses other unresolved policy issues about K to 12.

Among these issues involve the designated “mother tongue” that teachers may use in schools today because some communities insist that their dominant language is more effective, he said.

“But if we have lessons we can impart successfully [using a performance or a painting] without saying a word, wouldn’t that solve that problem?” he asked. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon

Source: Philippine daily Inquirer, June 9, 2012 
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/209415/teachers-revisit-theater-techniques-for-teaching-under-k-to-12

SANAYGURO National Training for SPA Teachers

SANAYGURO National Training for Teachers of Special Program for the Arts (SPA) is a series of training for all arts teachers of SPA schools across the country. The program utilizes syllabus designed and developed in close coordination by the DepEd with the NCCA artist-teacher experts towards improving and upgrading the arts curricula of DepEd SPA and fortifying knowledge and skills of all SPA Arts teachers. The project consists of two components, namely:

1. Specialized Workshop for SPA Drama Teachers and
2. Integrated Multi-Arts Teachers’ Training.

Led by the NCCA Chairperson Prof Felipe de Leon Jr, the series of trainings will be facilitated by the artist-faculties of the NCCA.

                      

The objectives of the SANAYGURO are the following:

1. To provide a common understanding of the language of the arts;
2. To gather feedback on the proposed long-term curriculum for SPA along the K-12 curriculum;
3. To equip participants-teachers with principles of original arts creation through a creation process reflecting the core values of the new curriculum.             

Topics included in the Integrated Multi-Arts Teachers’ Training are the following: SPA for Cultural Education, Art as Cultural Expression, Art Production of Different Genre and Developing Assessment Schemes for SPA courses. While the Specialized Workshop for SPA Drama Teachers will cover topics on script development, acting, directing, technical theatre and discussion on Philippine drama.

6th Tanghal in Luzon

February is the National Arts Month! In lieu with this national celebration, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts - Committee on Dramatic Arts (NCCA-CDA), together with the Luzon Arts & Culture Network Inc (Lusong), launches the 6th Tanghal in Luzon. Tanghal is a national university and college-based theater festival that will be held in Benguet State University, La Trinidad, Baguio City from February 9 to 11.

6TH TANGHAL CALLED FOR ENTRIES

Last year, NCCA called for applications for the 6th National University-based Theater Festival to be held this February 2012 in four different sites, namely: Baguio City (Luzon), Dumaguete City (Visayas), General Santos City (Mindanao) and the National Capitol Region. This call has been opened for all university-based theater groups in the country. Slots were also provided for community-based theater groups and/or programs which have partnership program with higher educational institutions.  Applications were then screened by the members of the Selection Committee. The selected entries were announced last January 10, 2012.

SHOWCASE OF TALENTS: TOWARDS TRADITION AND INNOVATION

The selected entries will be performing their pieces in Benguet State University. These performances are in line with the festival's theme: Tradition and Innovation.

The festival will be held at Benguet State University from February 9 to 11. Check out below for the schedule of performances.

Come and celebrate the Arts Season with us!