Good fortune probably shines on Dr. Myrna S. Motoomull every day. For starters, she lives and works in a place whose name comes from a word in the dialect of the Manobo tribe that loosely translates into “City of Good Luck.”

“Dr. Myrna” is the highly motivated Department of Education schools division superintendent of Gingoog City in the southern province of Misamis Oriental. She routinely reaches out to private organizations that advocate quality education. When the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP) held a special Mentoring the Mentors introductory session in Cebu City for Department of Education regional directors and division superintendents, we got her attention. When we visited Mindanao, she made sure she could sit with us and discuss the Mentoring the Mentors program in greater detail.

In 2005 she invited the FWWPP to organize a five-day, full-featured Mentoring the Mentors session exclusively for the principals and master teachers in her division.

In pre-session communications, Dr. Myrna told us (i.e., the MMP team led by Dr. Evelyn Mejillano, with Dr. Celia Adriano, Dr. Sol Francisco and myself as members) that Gingoog City’s National Achievement Test scores for school year 2002-2003 was just 56.30 percent. In SY 2003-2004, it was at 56.36 percent up ever so slightly by .06 percent.

Dr. Myrna now wanted to see if Mentoring the Mentors could help her bring out the best in Gingoog City’s public school teachers.

This was not the first time that a Department of Education executive had reached out to us with a request like this. We have had similar missives from school divisions in Pampanga province in Luzon; in Iloilo City, Bacolod City and Tacloban City in the Visayas; and in Region 10 and Caraga in Mindanao.

At first, many superintendents just wanted something that would put the teaching zeal back in the hearts of their faculty, but an energized educator can turn into a force of nature. Increasingly we began getting requests from division superintendents, supervisors and principals for fresh approaches to teaching effectiveness.

Many requests were very specific. “Help us teach our children to read well” and “Do you have any modules for teaching English, Science and Math effectively?” seemed to be common denominators.

To its credit, the Department of Education has not been remiss in developing and implementing modules like this. Unfortunately, the field is so huge that on its own the Department of Education —despite being the country’s largest bureaucracy—has difficulty delivering these teaching-enhancement “tools” in a timely fashion.

But Dr. Myrna from the City of Good Luck is lucky indeed.

Big private corporate foundations like Metrobank and Ayala, experienced and well-organized NGOs like Dr. Milwida Guevara’s Synergeia, and small, mobile private foundations like the FWWPP have stepped up to help bridge this development gap, and our concerted efforts seem to be paying off.

We are now seeing the paradigm shift that is at Mentoring the Mentors’ core—the “kambiyo sa pananaw” [shift in view] finally beginning to take root among our school heads and local Department of Education executives.

In trying to find ways to help their wards learn well, the teachers were selflessly leaving their comfort zones behind. By embarking on a sustained drive for excellence, division superintendents like Dr. Myrna were demonstrating very admirable servant leadership qualities.

To meet the need, we went for tighter integration between mentoring principles and practices of Character and Values Formation, Building Relationships, Leadership for Service, with cutting-edge active teaching and learning strategies. With the help of educators like Dr. Soledad Francisco, Ph.D. in Linguistics, Dr. Lea Igaya, vice president for academic affairs of Good Samaritan Colleges in Cabanatuan City and Dr. Amor de Torres of Capitol University in Cagayan de Oro City, we revised our modules to show how to apply these principles to specific subject areas.

Dr. Myrna’s determination has reflected well on her division. Gingoog City’s NAT result in school year 2004-2005 went up to 60.66 percent. For school year 2005-2006, Gingoog City’s NAT scores leaped to 65.85 percent. This year, Gingoog’s NAT is 72.51 percent, one of the highest in the country.

But perhaps more than the numbers, this statement of commitment sent to us by Mitchel Villaceran, one of the participants at the Gingoog City sessions, validates both the Mentoring the Mentors program and Dr. Myrna’s demonstrated leadership.

“We solemnly commit ourselves to do our duties and responsibilities in this vineyard of our Lord as teacher-mentors.

“We commit to answer the call for change and we believe that change must begin in us. We look forward to a broader and brighter horizon of a socially transformed community.

“We commit to share what we have learned and are continuing to learn [with] our fellow teachers and students.

“We have been blessed with the privilege to help a child understand the world around him.

“We commit to uphold and respect this privilege at all times, because even just one child can change the world.

“Lastly, we commit that we will unselfishly give our best to help build a better Philippines and a better world.”

(Signed) The Gingoog City English Mentors

Dr. Eden Omboy, recently retired schools division superintendent of the Department of Education in Butuan City, is the FWWPP’s Mentoring the Mentors coordinator for Mindanao.