Making Mother Tongue Big Books Through University-Community Partnerships

Education leaders now agree that “leveraging the language practices of the children who are being educated is a good thing. It is good whether the children are immigrants, refugees, regional minorities, indigenous peoples, deaf, hearing, or majorities” (Garcia & Lin, 2016).  However, governments who wish to implement a bilingual or multilingual education program face two major challenges: the training of teachers in appropriate pedagogies and the dearth of learning materials — including textbooks, storybooks, and other references — in local languages (Edwards and Ngwaru, 2012). Between these two challenges, the lack of materials has been cited as the most major obstacle (Busch, 2007; Edwards, 2009; Heugh, 2008; Kamwendo, 2008; Opoku-Amankwa, 2015; Bühmann and Trudell, 2007).

MTB-MLE in the Philippines.
Beginning in 2009, the Philippine government has been institutionalizing a program called Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) for its 47,000 schools. MTB-MLE promotes the use of mother tongues to teach basic literacy, develop comprehension of concepts in math and science, and to bridge to a second language such as Filipino or English. In ethnic minority or indigenous groups, the use of local languages in schools is likewise viewed as a means to effectively explain indigenous knowledge systems and practices (DepEd Order 32 s.2015).

Nevertheless, a primary challenge to the new MTB-MLE policy is the fact that the Philippines is a linguistically diverse country with 182 living languages, most of which are spoken by minority indigenous groups (Eberhard et all, 2019). Furthermore, the publishers do not have the capacity to supply reading materials in the mother tongues. To address this concern, DepEd directed schools all over the archipelago to develop locally the needed instructional materials and storybooks, which should be original, written in the local languages and contextualized (DepEd Order 74 s.2009). A digital copy of their output is to be shared through the Learning Resource Materials portal.

Moreover, the localized materials production requires partnership with the community especially with local writers, artists, community leaders, and knowledge bearers. In some places, helping the teachers produce mother tongue materials are other education stakeholders such as universities, non-government organizations, and mother tongue advocates.

Big books.
Dequila et al (2015) wrote that the big books in MTB-MLE are materials that children can touch, featuring enlarged text and pictures, and can make learning “a wholesome and exciting learning adventure.” The big book stories are written in the mother tongue and they narrate stories about pupils’ daily experiences, fables or folklores, and original imaginative stories. Introduced by teachers in New Zealand in the 1970s, the big book was meant to simulate the natural lap reading experience of young children and their caregivers in a shared, flexible, and more feasible manner—through enlarged storybooks (Nicoll-Hatton, 1992; Button and Johnson, 1997).

This report describes the processes involved in creating MTB-MLE storybooks through a simplified, abbreviated method that utilizes the participatory process between a university and selected ethnolinguistic communities. It examines what conditions and resources are needed and what challenges arise. The use of the participatory process as required by MLE and Indigenous Education policies would mean providing greater flexibility and enabling the community to be involved and have more control over the production of materials (Kumar, 2002).

The ideas here are generated from lessons learned from four separate occasions of participatory big book making workshops from 2015 to 2019. Each occasion lasted for one to three months.  There were two sets of participants – one consisted of graduate students  from the College of Education, University of the Philippines. The big book making project was a service learning activity for two courses -- Educational Foundations and Nonformal Education, both taught by the author (Arzadon).
The other group were participants from the following ethnolinguistic communities: .

●        Ayta Mag-Antsi, an indigenous community in Tarlac Province. There were 15 mothers led by two daycare workers who came to tell stories.
●        Ayta Mag-Indi, an indigenous community in Pampanga Province. There were 18 participants from the community (16 women and 2 men).
●        Iwak, an indigenous group in Nueva Vizcaya Province. There were 25 participants, including village leaders, public school teachers, and provincial government representatives.
●        Bikolano, one of the major ethnolinguistic groups living at San Fernando, Camarines Sur Province. This group, which does not claim to be “indigenous,” included public school teachers and students of Alternative Learning system (an adult education program) and community leaders.

Preparatory Stage
The central event in the big book making process is the storytelling and story writing workshop held at the village and usually lasted for one to two days. The participants from the university served as workshop facilitators and documenters while the community members were the storytellers. In the four occasions of participatory big book making, certain critical events were identified: preparation of the workshop facilitators, organizing the main event, storytelling and story writing session at the community, editing, translating, illustrating the stories, printing and binding, and finally, presenting and turning over the big books to the community.

Prior to the workshop, the participants underwent a series of preparations. The graduate student participants who will facilitate the workshops had to read and discuss about the nature of MTB-MLE program and the use of mother tongue big books in teaching basic literacy. Malone’s (2003) workshop guide was used to highlight the importance of using materials that are familiar and interesting to the learners in making the big books. The “climbing a mountain” diagram was also utilized to illustrate the key points of development in the plot, from the introduction of the main characters to the climax up until the story’s resolution. Another important characteristic of the big book that was emphasized during preparation is that the story should be written using the natural language that is heard and spoken in the daily life of a child. In addition, the facilitators were given a checklist of specific tasks to be undertaken during the storytelling event at the site and they were likewise instructed on how to treat the community with respect.

Meanwhile, the preparation with the partner community began right at the start of the semester. The teacher from the university visited the site to discuss the project with a community leader, and this meeting involved deciding on the date, place and participants involved, including the arrangement for food, lodging, local transportation and security of the participants from the university. The main big book workshop at the community would need at least two days.

Another crucial item to be discussed during the initial visit with the community was the choice of themes. The community leaders were asked what kind of stories they would want to be passed on to the village’s children, notably stories about the community’s heritage and more everyday concerns. The themes would also determine the types of participants or speakers who will supply the material for the story, e.g. a story about fishing or farming had to be told by participants knowledgeable about the trade. Choosing the themes of the big books and the workshop participants allowed the community partners to influence the direction of the entire project and decide on the content and the kind of big books that will be produced. It must be noted that three of the partner communities were not aware of any orthography that was developed for their language.  They assumed that since they were literate in Filipino, they can transfer the same skills in writing stories in the local languages.

The main event
It was Saturday morning and the school yard — typically empty during this time — saw a gathering of men and women, both young and old, entering through the school gate. Once seated, the community elder welcomed the guests and introduced the purpose of the event. One facilitator from the university brought out a sample big book and read the whole story, pointing at the text and pictures on each page. It was the first time that the audience heard a story written in a local language. There were expressions of surprise and delight coming from the children and some elderly women.
Afterwards, the teacher from the university explained the specific tasks of the day and divided the participants into smaller groups, with each group being assigned to work on a specific theme.
After some ice-breakers, the facilitator discussed the overview of tasks. He sought permission for the documentation of the stories as one member recorded the narrations using an audio recording device and another member took down notes.

The following were the specific instructions given to each group:

1. The graduate students will briefly discuss the features of a good story.
2. Each participant will tell a story related to the theme. It can be based on their own or another person’s experience. They will then narrate this story in their own natural language in 5 minutes or less. Afterwards, they will share the same story in Filipino (or a language shared by the community participants and the university students). Alternatively, a participant tells a story and someone in the group can do the translation. The documenter will listen closely to the stories, taking note of highly emotive words or terms, phrases, and objects that they tend to repeat and emphasize. (The exact words used should be noted.)
3. The facilitators will process each story and clarify facts and details with the speakers.
4. The group will choose a story that they will then develop into a big book, preferably the one that is most interesting and is strongly representative of the theme. It can be based on the story of one member or another story that combines the features of various stories.
5. One person will narrate the complete story in the local natural language and retell it in the shared language.
6. The participants will write the story as they hear it, then review and rewrite it. They will take note of terms that needed to be clarified.
7. Once the initial story is completed, the participants will draw a picture series (using stick figures) on a manila paper. Each picture should be numbered according to the sequence of events in the story.
8. The students will take photos of places mentioned in the story such as homes, river, and farms, and including materials that might be unique to the community, e.g. fish traps, hunting tool, musical instrument, traditional wedding dress, ritual clothes, etc.
9. Photos of the whole workshop group will also be taken, and contact information of the participants will be noted down for follow up work. 
10. At the end of the workshop, the small groups read their story to the big crowd using the stick drawings as illustrations.  Other participants were asked to give feedback – both commendations and suggestions for improvement to the initial output.

Refinements and Translations

There were occasions that the community participants would continue revising the stories and editing the written text. In working with the Ayta Mag-antsi and Ayta Mag-indi, two representatives from the community traveled to the university campus to assist the groups in editing the mother tongue texts. In the case of the Bikol stories, after the community participants wrote the stories, they were directed by the local office of the Department of Education to align the text to the new Bikol orthography. There were also discussions on whether they should use terms which were believed to be borrowed from another town. Because of the requirement from the officials, the community participants asked for more time in submitting the final text of their stories.

This kind of controversy did not happen with the Ayta Magantsi and Iwak groups because they did not have any access to any orthography of their language (if such existed at all) that influenced the writing of the texts. There was actually no available published literature in the local language in the community. The system of writing used was based on what they already knew and they used in writing in other languages like Filipino or English. The two participants from the Ayta Mag Indi group were resource people of a bible translation project; thus, they wrote the stories using the conventions they learned from their project.

Part of the support provided by resource people from the community was in the translation of the texts into Filipino, English or the lingua franca of the province, like Kapampangan. Instead of a simple translation, some groups attempted to make an adaptation of the story in a familiar language. Regardless, the translated or adapted story in the lingua franca was meant to broaden the readership, and it can also enable teachers who do not speak the mother tongue to use the materials in Filipino or English classes.

After the translation of the text into a major language, the story was also “translated” into images. The task of drawing the images were undertaken by the graduate students, some of whom were skilled artists, while others looked to relatives, friends, or professional illustrators to accomplish the task; on one occasion, a teacher from the community volunteered to do the illustrations of a big book. In the process of adding the illustrations, groups would present the digital file of the drawings to the whole class for review and to solicit suggestions for enhancement.

Printing and binding
Once the illustrations were completed, a student using a computer software would work on the layout of the big book that will place the images and texts. The layout of the big book conformed to how it is usually used in a shared reading activity. The teacher opens the book to the class and spread two pages  with the illustration on the left page and on the corresponding text at the right page. In reading the big book to the class, the teacher would first point at the image and ask the pupils what they think about the picture and what might happen next. After reading the pictures, the teacher points and reads the texts. These skills – speaking, interpreting pictures, and predicting are necessary for beginning reading skills (Pado, 2020).

Finally, the formatted storybook is printed in A3-size paper, although one of the groups opted to draw the illustrations manually and write the text using colored pencils. They also did manual binding which involved attaching the papers using a durable adhesive tape and sewing them together with a string and large needle. However, most of the groups brought their electronic files to digital printing and photocopying shops, often found within or in the vicinity of the university campus. These street corner shops have machines to print colored drawings and texts on large A3 papers and they also provide various binding services: tape or soft binding, stitching or hard binding, or quick binding using either a plastic coil, plastic combs, or ring wire. The whole process of printing and quick binding of a big book takes about one to two hours.

Returning the books to the community
The writing of the stories and the production of the big books undertaken by the working groups of graduate students were completed in about three months. The semester for the writing of Ayta Mag-Indi materials was the most productive with a total of 8 big books completed by one class in a semester. Typically, it would take three to four students to produce one big book in three to four months; a shorter period would require a greater number of participants. The total cost of adding illustration, printing and binding was shared by the students. Meanwhile, the digital file of the big book, including the high resolution images, were uploaded in a Google Drive folder made accessible to the class and the community leaders for printing or reproduction.

Once all the big books were submitted, a copy of each title would be delivered and presented to the community through a “book launch” of sorts. It involved speeches and reading the stories before a group of children. The Ayta Mag-Indi community leader expressed his gratitude in seeing the books feature their children as the main characters, especially because, according to him, their children would often express sadness that they were always absent in mainstream books. The Ayta community leaders have also expressed desire to learn how to create learning materials on their own, so that they will no longer have to wait for others to add to their collections. The Bikol group, on the other hand, even went as far as actually making their own materials, as the big books stirred interest among the teachers in other places in the province. The books became part of exhibits, literacy events, and teachers’ training, and the town mayor even allocated some funds for the reproduction of the materials.

Similarly, the big book making activity also made an impact on the graduate students, who wrote, in their reflection papers, about their realizations on the diversity of languages and the richness of indigenous knowledge; some even came to understand more profoundly the experience of discrimination that the indigenous children have to deal with every day.

Conclusion
This report reveals the great potential of the universities, especially Teacher Education Institutions, in assisting and enabling the ethno-linguistic groups (especially those with limited literature in their local language) to produce literacy-related and other learning materials. Such partnership captures authentic stories of the community and taps into the resources of the university like specialized knowledge regarding literacy and learning processes, organizing skills and greater access to relevant expertise like arts, computer science, anthropology, linguistics, and community development. As revealed in the reflection papers of the students, the service learning activity provided profound insights about inclusion/exclusion, social justice, and multilingual education.

Written by 
Mercedes Arzadon, Louise Borela & Nina Seva
University of the Philippines

Some contents of this article were included in a conference presentation by the same writers.
Participatory Big Book Making for Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education in the Philippines. 1st Biennial Conference of CESCam “Education for Shared Community and Prosperity”. December 6-7, 2019. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Comparative Education Society of Cambodia

Acknowledgement
We wish to thank Mel Awid and Leslie Gumba for facilitating the big book making in two areas and for sharing their ideas about the key tasks to be accomplished by the small groups.

See sample big books 

Ayta Mag-Indi children at Floridablanca, Pampanga

Ayta Mag-antsi children at Capas, Tarlac

A teacher in Tarlac uses the Ayta Mag-antsi big book in his ALS class

Teachers from Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya with the Iwak big books

Mayor Perry Mabolo and Mam Rosa Alma Olitoquit - showing the big books they received thru a courier

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