Training of Trainers  of Matatag Curriculum: Batch 1

Matatag Curriculum is a new Curriculum launched by DepEd Secretary at the same time our Vice President Sarah Duterte. The main goal of this curriculum is to produce competent,job-ready, and responsible citizens in our country. The implementation of this curriculum will start the school year 2024-2025 with kindergarten, grades 1, grades 4, and grades 7. Cebu Province was chosen as the pilot of this implementation and our district was one of the chosen schools that piloted the Matatag Curriculum for grades 1 learners for this school year. It was found that there was positive feedback upon implementing this curriculum. For the preparation of this school year's implementation, Region 7 conducted a regional training of trainers in each Division who will facilitate the training of trainers for the school-based training next month. Our division had a thorough preparation to make this Matatag training successful. There were 3 batches of participants coming from different sub-offices and for every batch, there were 2 venues. One group was held at Ecotech Center, Lahug, Cebu City, and the other batch was held at the Cebu Business Hotel. For every group there Program Management Team assigned. My class was the TLE 7 and it belongs to group A and was assigned to Cebu Business Hotel. Aside from the facilitators who were trained in the region, there were assigned class managers and process observers to oversee the training and manage the training in every class. I was assigned as Class Manager in TLE 7. As Class Manager aside from the preparation before the training, I also conducted an orientation for all participants with the different reminders, assignments, and checking of outputs, and helped the facilitators in their daily activities and outputs and checked and monitored their attendance.

The training seminar started with the opening program in the plenary session. participants also answered a pretest to test their prior knowledge of the Matatag Curriculum. After the opening, there were two topics discussed before the breakout session after lunchtime. Every day the participants will have their plenary where all the participants will have the same session and the breakout session where the participants will separate according to their subjects of specialization. In each class, the facilitators will focus the session on the subject matter assigned. The training was very strictly monitored when in fact each participant must have scanned their scanned copy and hardcopy of their outputs and submitted it to their class managers. While the session is ongoing nobody is allowed to leave the session or else their time will be deducted. Every day the participants must answer their evaluation test and on the fifth day they answer their post-test.

Participants were very participative in the training. They're very eager to learn various topics in every session so that when they are in their field they can facilitate well the training. The success of the implementation of this curriculum lies in their hands as trainers in their district or clustered schools. They must embrace it with all their hearts and minds so that their teachers must embrace it well too to realize the goal and objectives of this curriculum.

The training ended at exactly 5:30 on day 5 after the closing program and were shocked when our participants gave us a mug with pictures of our class as a gift. I'm thankful for their generosity and recognizing our efforts as a training management team. Even if I'm so tired of the preparation and making sure that the training went well still I'm happy that I'm part of this advocacy and part of the history.