A Portfolio on Benchmarking Experiences in Ateneo de Davao University

1. Educational Philosophy

“I believe that everybody is special, and it's up to them to find that quality and let it live”. I

always believe in every individual’s capacity and appreciate student’s value no matter how

different they are to each other, even what races they came from or background they are situated.

I was not able to practice my profession yet, but I have my involvement in teaching in the past

during my practice for my course completion.

But with that short experience, I come up with my teaching philosophy and it has to be

essentialism and progressivism a learner-centred instructional experience for all students. There

will be no teachers if there are no students. Students are the centre of the educational process and

it’s important that every teacher has to understand their role to play not just to take the obligation

to teach but definitely to take responsibility of the student’s entire development as a human

being. I apprehended that just like us, students longed for understanding and acceptance,

especially from the teacher. As an educator, I assume it’s our responsibility to accept student’s

differences and help them understand their own worth as well. We should not only focus on their

academic aspect but let it be in the total development of their personality. We should teach them

to live life realistically and practically and this must be included in our instruction inside the

classroom. We could bring inside the classroom what life outside through discussion to make

them relate in the real situation that they might encounter in the near future.

Students want and need to learn as much as they need food, clothing, and shelter. An

educator's primary job is to fill that primal need for learning by creating engaging and relevant
learning experiences every day. The greatest gift a teacher can give students is motivating them

to experience repeated learning success. Students learn best by doing in which active teaching

encourages active learning. Teachers should treat students as active participants in the learning

process, providing them with skills. These skills will help them be part of a high-performance

learning team. Also, students need to be encouraged to explore and research information beyond

the confines of the classroom and the textbook itself. The best way to engage a student is to have

a solid classroom management plan and a well-planned lesson that is grounded in relevant,

purposeful activities designed to enhance that student's knowledge and skills and leave them

wanting to learn more. Teachers should be strongly aligned with student-centred and student-

directed learning that embraces exploration, discovery, experiential learning, and the production

of academically rigorous products. A teacher should also be able to organize a standards-based

lesson sequence, successfully implement the plan, and then evaluate student learning. Moreover,

a teacher should be able to create an exciting learning environment that makes it difficult for

students to not learn. In conclusion, a teacher should know how to include all students in learning

at their own level, and a teacher should be able to inspire the students to push themselves to the

next level.
 2. Introduction

Benchmarking is a process designed to help school leaders complete these tasks. A

benchmark is a higher performing, similar school. The more a similar school outperforms your

school, the more compelling that school is as a benchmark. SchoolBenchmarker helps you

identify benchmark schools so that you can: Set achievable academic targets based on

demonstrated best-in-class performance. And, discover the programs, strategies and practices

that high performing, similar schools use to achieve their best-in-class performance. The strategy

of benchmarking is important both conceptually and practically and is being used for improving

administrative processes as well as instructional models at colleges and universities by

examining processes and models at other schools and adapting their techniques and approaches (

Chaffee & Sherr 1992; Clark 1992).

The goal of benchmarking is to promote and provide key personnel in charge of processes

with an external standard for measuring the quality and cost of internal activities and to help

identify where opportunities for improvement may reside.

Benchmarking attempts to answer the following questions;

- How well are we doing compared to others?

- How well do we want to be?

- Who is doing it the best?

- How do they do it?

- How can we adapt what they do to our institution?

- How can we be better than the best? (Kempner 1993)

main purpose of questions surrounding the practice of benchmarking in education. These are;

-How do we know if students are learning the right things at the right times?

- Is there even such a thing? Should high achievers set the standard for education?

- Are there such perfect or particular practices that make school become more competent and

effective compared to others?

- What might our benchmark schools be doing differently to achieve much better results?

What can we learn from them about; Curriculum alignment, Local assessment of student

performance, Instructional practices, Student engagement, Resource allocation, Organizing and

scheduling for learning, Professional development, Parent involvement, Use of data to inform

instructional decisions, and Academic intervention service design?

Standards and benchmarks truly help us educators revitalize both teaching and assessment.

Using benchmarks, it will create a curriculum of high academic standards for all students, and

even the schools' improvement for planning that involves setting clear targets, classifying

strategies to achieve those targets and allocating resources to implement the improvement

strategies.

Furthermore, universities use benchmarking as a way to help become more competitive. By

looking at how other school, colleges and universities are doing, they can identify areas where

they are underperforming. Schools including staff, teachers and students are also able to identify

ways they can improve their own actions including style, strategies and methodologies without

having to recreate the wheel. They are able to accelerate the process of change because they have

models from other schools in their productiveness to help guide their changes.
 3. Learning Experiences during the benchmarking

Al Paison once said, “If you're not benchmarking your performance against your

competitors, you're just playing with yourself.” Jim Collins also added that “All Good to Great

companies began the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts about

the reality of their business. When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the

truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident.” With this reference, it

emphasizes the advantage of learning from others. Benchmarking is to know more, to do more,

and become more and learn more about what to improve and develop the current structure of

education. Certainly, Benchmarking is becoming knowledgeable and competent by learning from

your competitors.

I am very thankful that I was involved in the benchmarking held at Ateneo De Davao

University. It was an exceptional opportunity but a lifetime experience to preserve. I was amazed

at the Universities commodious zone, the climate and environment, classrooms and other

facilities.

Schools physical commodities are pleasing, but the information I acquired in the course

of the conference with the education graduate school heads, it was undeniably priceless. When I

was in the conference hearing those words from the doctors sharing the vision and mission of

their school and how they able to attain it step by step by keeping their goal and target on it, it

was like an achievement that I was imparted of that knowledge. I was astonished on how they

keep their path into their vision, how they keep an eye to their students enhancement, on how

they follow the curriculum that made their students skilled compared to other graduates by

primarily focusing on research assignment.

just pinned my ears back to them clearly to assure not to slip-up any small details. I was

stimulated and enlightened how they synthesize their strategies and implement the selected

approaches into the university’s academic improvement plan that includes targets, strategies, and

operation of deliverables and timelines.

They stated to us the following; how to develop an action plan, identify individuals who

will be accountable in putting into practice the universities policies. They include key

deliverables, projected completion dates, and accountability. They also have an allocation of

budget and resources to any activity they intended like seminars and training for teacher’s

development, a collaboration of the academic improvement plan broadly to all stakeholders, the

implementation of their improvement plan and the intensive care and modification to the school

structure. They also stated that the university improvement team monitors the efficiency of

operation throughout the planning period and even follow up from time to time. Monitor the

performance against targets and against proposed completion dates. And finally, modify some

strategies as necessary.
4. DOCUMENTATION/PHOTOS

ADDU SCHOOL FACILITIES

March 12, 2019

STUDENT NAME: FELY GRACE CAMOS, C

SUBJECT: FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION-EDUC 201

DEGREE: MASTER OF ARTS IN EDUCATION – EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT

PROFESSOR: DR. GAUDY C. ORTIZO PHD