DepEd Mandaluyong

by: Nerissa B. Mercado, Teacher – Pleasant Hills Elementary School

PLEASANT Hills Elementary School (PHES) teachers have never given up looking for and bringing learners at risk of dropping out (LARS) back to school in its Sagip LARS Operation.

Learners who have been consistently not attending online classes, not submitting learning outputs, and no longer participating in school activities for a grading period and more and who are now considered probable drop-outs were “searched and rescued” by the teachers.

Despite the challenges in reaching out to these learners and their parents due to communication difficulties, transfer of residences, and lack of cooperation from some parents, PHES teachers, seeking the help of the barangay and block leaders, were able to locate the learners and convinced them to go back to school.

With their parents’ consent, the learners were asked to attend make-up classes in school and others joined the face-to-face classes to catch up with their learning outputs and complete the quarterly grades.

Teachers made extra efforts to prepare special activities and performance tasks for them besides attending to them in special classes even during no-class days. and home visitations

In short interviews with them, teachers found out why these learners failed to attend in their online classes and submit learning outputs and eventually opted to stop schooling because of reasons such as no gadgets to use (tablets are no longer working), no home learning partners to help them out in their modules, lack of focus due to some distractions at home, family problems and lack of motivation and guidance of parents.

Meanwhile, school head Mrs. Lucia M. Llego has encouraged the other grade levels to continue Sagip LARS Operation as the school year nearly ends while Grade 6 is now expecting one hundred percent of the learners to graduate for the school year 2021-2022.