NSDAPS personnel toured the campus of Gyeseong High School.
SOUTH KOREA – The faculty and staff of Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu Parochial School (NSDAPS) visited Gyeseong High School, a premier secondary educational institution in South Korea, on February 07, 2020 for an educational benchmarking.
Gyeseong High School is a member of The Catholic Education Foundation (CEF) that aims to provide and instill Christian education anchored on the teachings of Vatican Council II “the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity”. It is the home of 67 faculty members and 8 office staff inclined to uphold Catholic spirit in educating students to practice Christ’s love and sacrifice. The school personnel are devoted to mold well-mannered, competent, and service-oriented students as their motto.
Presently, Gyeseong High School is committed in helping 923 students in the Grade 10-12 levels to be loving, thankful, reliable, honest, competent, and creative. Gyeseong High School is recognized as an educational institution which footprints have illuminated in different global platforms in various disciplines. In 2006, it shifted from all-girls school to coeducational high school. It is run by the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, a religious apostolic congregation of pontifical right for teaching.
Sr. Shim-Suk-jin and Mr. JoonKwang Khil, the school principal and school director respectively, warmly welcomed the Filipino delegates from Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu Parochial School comprising of the school’s administrative officers, faculty, and staff.
Sr. Shim-Suk-jin on her lead-in speech said that “collaboration between schools with the same Catholic spirit and educational goal can make great Catholic schools together”. Ms. Jiyoung Jung, an English teacher, introduced the Gyeseong High School’s core identities, educational statistics, and historical background. In addition, she enthusiastically shared the different Global Programs of the school envisioned to develop leadership skills and cultivate interpersonal and intrapersonal qualities through immersion, volunteer work, and international training abroad.
Moreover, Ms. Jiyoung Jung relayed the school’s different prestigious programs like Gifted Student Program, Core High School of Art Education Program, Integrated Reading Program and Lunchtime TED Class Program. Lastly, she oriented the NSDAPS benchmarking team about their conducive and state-of-the-art facilities geared toward enjoyable and comfortable school time.
Gyeseong High School is awarded as “School of Good Environment Education” in 2005, “School of Good Assessment” in 2009, “School of Good Curriculum” in 2012 and 2013, “School of Good Subject-Based Classroom System and “School of Good Art Education” in 2014.
Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu Parochial School reciprocated the scholastic altruism of Gyeseong High School by sharing the school’s academic, outreach, and extra-curricular programs through the audio-visual presentation of Dr. Violeta P. Navarro, the assistant principal of the Senior High School department. The AVP featured collated documents, pictures, and videos from the different in-campus and off-campus school undertakings.
NSDAPS personnel toured the campus of Gyeseong High School where they visited the library, classrooms, laboratories, counselling center, and other eye-opening facilities of the school. The faculty of Gyeseong High School forthrightly shared their teaching practices, answered queries and gave inputs on how lessons can be further localized, concretized and contextualized. Their faculty willingly engaged on an intellectual exchange of academic discourses with the visiting teachers from NSDAPS. Mr. Won-Chi Pok handed 50 self-made learning aids to NSDAPS which he, himself, devised. Mrs. Purificacion P. Singueo and Rev. Fr. Gerard Joaquin V. Masangya, the school principal and director of NSDAPS, received the learning supplements. After the tour, Mr. JoonKwang Khil answered the questions of the benchmarking team in their Audio-Visual Room.
The delegates from NSDAPS expressed their heartfelt gratitude to Gyeseong High School through a token and certificate of appreciation handed over to the officials of the school during the closing ceremony. The benchmarking endeavor is a preparation for the September 2020 visit of The Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PAASCU). This activity which was planned by the school administrators years ago, was envisioned to elevate the standard of education, push for innovation and paradigm shift, pinpoint areas for improvement, and align teaching and learning pedagogies in adherence to global standard.
The benchmarking in Korea paved a way for NSDAPS personnel to discover, reflect and assess where the school stands compared to what the other schools in other country is doing. This will be instrumental in the aspiration of the NSDAPS teachers to be better evangelizers, formators and classroom facilitators in handling diverse 21st century learners.
The Korea Benchmarking 2020 intends to further solidify the quality Catholic education that Nuestra Senora de Aranzazu Parochial School has been providing for more than 50 years to Aranzan students. This is a testament that the school is not leaving any stone unturned in serving its clientele in the best way possible. (Emman Valderama)
