“if we don’t challenge the way things have always been,

we’ll never discover the greatest breakthroughs of our future”

The quest for knowledge is lifelong. However, discoveries, innovations, inventions, and similar
others, didn’t come or haven’t formed in an instant. A lot of sacrifices, processes and even failures
occur along the way. The power of man to challenge the status quo therefore has opened doors for
never-ending opportunities to learn and discover better things for the improvement of man and the
entire humanity.

Let’s take for instance our educational practices before the pandemic. The traditional face-to-face is
one conventional type of delivering instruction to our learners. The usual teacher-learner interaction
is highly recognized through face-to-face classroom instruction. However, the advent of the
pandemic has changed the landscape of teaching and learning process in our schools, which
challenged us on how to make education continuously at work amid the pressing crisis. Challenged
on enabling education at the height of the pandemic, teachers have scouted for means to serve and
deliver the education that every learner deserves. The teachers have seen that the Self-Learning
Modules (SLMs) alone could not suffice the provision of education of good quality, which
henceforth, challenged themselves to create and design learning and instructional innovations.

No one forced our teachers to go beyond the SLMs or the printed modules, but by looking at the
challenges as opportunities, a lot have been developed which have benefited our learners. For
instance, the development of teacher-made video lessons to supplement the printed learning
modules, is but a breakthrough in indigenous cultural communities and other far-flung areas where
learners have no instructional support at home due to parents’ educational background or lack of
knowledge, since most of them were not even able to go to school during their childhood days. The
transformation of the two-way radio or commonly known as “walkie-talkie” to a school-on-the-air
means of teaching reading and communicating with learners in the far-flung villages in our
municipality is but a response to the challenge brought about by the pandemic.

These might be little things done in our sphere of influence but these for us are significant
breakthroughs and milestones from the usual teaching practices that we had before the pandemic. It
is therefore worth reflecting that “if we don’t challenge the way things have always been, we’ll never
discover the greatest breakthroughs of our future”.

Leaders must become comfortable with changing their leadership style from directive to
consultative

I think, we can feel comfortable in whatever leadership styles depending on the situation and
the impact that these styles may contribute to the people and the entire organization.
In the case where directive leadership style is transitioned to consultative style, for me, it’s
okey and necessary depending on the situation. For situations wh
For example, a directive approach includes creating a clear plan of action for the team to
execute when uncertainty is high. ... With a short deadline and two new team members
still learning their roles, she decided the most effective way to move her team forward was to
give them clear and direct scope and task guidelines