Speech delivered during the Scholastic Readers’ Cup Awarding Ceremony at Shangrila Hotel Makati
Ladies and gentlemen, Good afternoon.
After having ranked 1st in the Scholastic Readers Cup for 3 consecutive years, our school was placed in the “Winners’ Circle”. That happened 3 years ago. Today, after another 3 consecutive years, our school managed to remain in the “Winners’ Circle”. The best thing to be in the Circle, aside from the prestige that certainly comes with it, is to be spared of the pressures of fighting your way to reach the number 1 spot. The days where I would witness our learners, including those grades 9 and 10 big kids, queuing outside the library to take quizzes even on Saturdays (before covid struck no one was allowed to take the test with their PCs or laptops outside the school premises, fearing their parents might take the tests for them!) , those days are still fresh, and will remain vividly fresh, in my memory. Though gone were the days when our learners had to comply with the school rule of reading 300, 400, or even more books in a year (since you don’t know how many books the students of other partner schools, nay competing schools, have read). Yet now that our school has been placed in the “Winners’ circle”, our learners need to meet stiffer conditions set by Scholastic in order to remain outside of the competing group, lest our kids would revert back to the scary old days.
And the results? A yearly increase in the percentage of learners classifies as Advanced and Proficient Readers. What more can make us mentors and parents feel elated than to see our kids becoming avid readers (though some need prodding, many need to be forced), and thereby significantly increase their reading and language proficiency level.
My favorite math example has always been about Scholastic Readers Cup. And I’m not tired of repeating it over and over again, today is no exception. I would ask parents, how much a story book costs in average in the bookstore? They would say around P400. Alright, then how much it would cost you if you buy your child 100 books a year? P40K. Wow! How about 200 books, P80K. I doubt many parents, let alone all parents in a school, would spend that amount on books for a child in a year. Here in our school, children can easily read (really read and comprehend, we can easily monitor their progress) 400 titles a year, without spending a single centavo aside from the less than P3000 parents have paid at the start of the school year. What’s the value your child get in terms of Pesos for the 400 books? P160K. So, if our tuition fee is P80K a year, parent owe us equivalent to another year of tuition fee. Every year! So, what lesson we get out of this math problem? An excellent product need not be expensive. And Scholastic Reading program is this product.
For bringing literally to our doorstep this excellent yet reasonably priced product, Scholastic Philippines indeed deserves a big round of applause. Thank you Scholastic Philippines. Thank you.