About the Project

The

SCHOOL-ON-THE-AIR
ON VISUAL ARTS
FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

...is a radio school project that came out as a segue to the community radio drama project on disaster preparedness with funding support from the East-West Center in Hawaii, USA that was implemented in October up until December 2020.

Since March 2020 and up until now, the Covid 19 pandemic has brought much anxieties and mental health problems among people worldwide due to travel restrictions and quarantine protocols. There is limited mobility for people that only allows the transport of essential goods and services. With this, the students and teachers are greatly affected by having online classes and no face to face class settings. Aside from the pandemic, disasters like flash floods and typhoons continue to affect the people due to climate change and human activities against the environment such as improper management of solid wastes, quarrying, illegal logging, among others.

One way of addressing these two major problems on mental health and environment is to teach 120 junior/senior Filipino high school students together with their respective teachers on how to express their feelings amid the pandemic. Also, the students and teachers will learn how to show their concern for the environment through visual arts particularly on honing their drawing skills. These are the students who enrolled in secondary education with Music, Arts, Physical Education, and Health (MAPEH) subject and the teachers teaching MAPEH. MAPEH is one of the learning areas of the Philippine secondary schools like the Department of Education (DepEd).

In other words, the visual arts radio program will promote the mental health and well-being of MAPEH students and teachers in this time of health crisis.

It will also improve education, awareness raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, and other adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning (United Nations, 2021). The MAPEH students and their teachers then will participate in the radio school to learn those things, finish the module in 1.5 months, submit lesson requirements to get a passing grade in all quizzes/exams, and receive a certificate during the virtual graduation.

Using a community radio for visual arts education is a great challenge. It will entail an integration of other platforms like the modular lessons in video format for the class demonstration on drawings. The cost-effective use of radio can be harnessed in teaching the students on how they can effectively grasp the visual arts lessons aside from having an asynchronous manner of learning of students in the remote areas and poor community villages. They will be accessing to the FB livestreaming for those students who cannot be reached by the frequency of 104.7 MHz of DYDC-FM with its Internet radio.

The radio school on visual arts laboratory has five objectives:

1. raise awareness on mental health and environment problems among the MAPEH students and teachers,

2. inculcate sustainable practices of combating mental health problems and protecting of the environment,

3. learn the skills of visual arts especially on drawings with the themes on mental health and environment,

4. get a passing mark on the radio visual arts program, and

5. put up an online virtual exhibit of the students’ and teachers’ drawings to promote possible solutions to mental health and environment problems.

With regard to its research objectives, the project has the following:

1. ascertain the profile of MAPEH students and teachers,

2. determine their increase in knowledge, attitude towards, and intention to practice mental health coping mechanisms and protection of the environment measures, and

3. determine the SOA participants’ messages through their visual drawings and poetry they create to promote mental health and protection of the environment.

The ultimate goals of the community radio school are: raising awareness among MAPEH students and teachers on mental health promotion and environmental protection in the 2 provinces of Leyte & Southern Leyte and teaching them on visual arts by honing their skills on sketching, drawing, and painting on mental health literacy and concerns for the environment.

The radio school visual arts lab will undergo three (3) stages: a) pre-broadcast, b) broadcast proper, and c) post-broadcast.

In the pre-broadcast stage (1 month), this will entail coordination with various project stakeholders such as DepEd City Divisions, LGUs in the project sites, MAPEH teachers and students, VSU, DDC, EWC, YSEALI, DYDC-FM and other project implementers that will be established for the project. This also includes the admission/registration of MAPEH students and teachers to the visual arts SOA program at DYDC-FM. The project implementers based at the Visayas State University (VSU) and from G19 in London will prepare for the modules or lessons of the visual arts program in video format. The promotion of the radio school project will be broadcast for weeks. This will contain the teaser/trailer of the radio program. This stage also identifies the SOA program hosts and institutes the conduct of the pre-test using a questionnaire among the prospective MAPEH students and teachers.

During the broadcast proper (1.5 months), video arts lessons per module will be conducted via ZOOM and livestreaming at DYDC-FM. The lesson proper will follow a rundown: 1) roll call of students, 2) introduction of the current lesson, 3) review of past lesson, 4) giving of quizzes/exams, 5) reading of feedback or comments from students on Facebook. It’s on this stage that outstanding or top three honors students and teachers will be selected based on their class performance with oral and written exams and their final online submission of their drawings with poetry.

On the post-broadcast (1 month), there will be a conduct of post-test among the enrolled MAPEH students and teachers. A virtual graduation will be done for the awarding of top honors students and teachers with their drawing submissions. Also, an online coffee table book for the compilation of best top 50 drawings will be launched. Gathering of data and data analysis will be done by the project implementers. Draft articles out from the data gathered will be submitted for publication in international journals. The accepted journal articles will be presented in scientific gathering or conferences.

Logical Framework