San Vicente’s 6th graders go on retreat

Close to 100 6th grade students from San Vicente Elementary School went up Capitol Hill Tuesday this week to visit government offices, meet the governor and other government officials.

In a packed-lunch picnic outside the Governor’s Office, the students crowded around Gov. Juan N. Babauta for his autograph on their field trip workbook.

Babauta, busy giving the final touches to the State of the Commonwealth Address Thursday, keeping an eye on the current atmospheric condition workshop, and the economic roundtable on the weekend, managed to take time off to personally walk the students through his office. He was assisted by senior aide Frank Taitano.

Enterprising 6th grader Simeon Skilling, after getting the governor’s signature in his workbook, immediately confided to friends that he will sell the autograph to the highest bidder on eBay.

The students were on SVES’ annual retreat. Earlier in the morning, the group in smaller units visited the Emergency Management Office, the Assistive Technology Center of the Developmental Disabilities Office, and the Arts and Culture Center to view the current Women’s Art Exhibits.

“It was fun and they were funny,” Clifford Fejeran said after getting a briefing from Ben Cepeda of EMO.

Director Rodolfo Pua was on hand, though he is currently enabling the Volcanic Ash workshop being held on island, and hosting the visiting experts on atmospheric conditions who had come to the gathering.

The day before, the students walked the grounds of the American Memorial Park. Chuck Sayon, resident park ranger and administrator, briefed the group on the features of the park, and the new additions like the Visitors’ Center due for completion and consecration on Memorial Day weekend.

“I never thought of a park as sacred ground before,” Katherine Norech explained during the groups’ reflection time after the event. Sayon explained that, in addition to the war memorial features of the park, which honors the sacrifice of life and death, Micro Beach was also the sacred teaching grounds for the Carolinians where navigators transmitted the guarded and valuable navigational wisdom from the elders to the selected young.

The SVES annual retreat is a five-day series of events of on- and off-campus activities for the graduating 6th grade class, paid for by the students themselves, save for PSS funding on the AIDS/HIV component of the program. Not all students qualified to join the off-campus events. Intended as an accountability structure, students who were lagging behind in their academic requirements, or who committed serious behavioral infractions were kept on campus to perform core curriculum academic tasks, as well as reflect on what it means to live with the consequences of one’s behavior.

For this year, the retreat’s schedule began with the American Memorial Park visit on Monday, Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Museo y Mes Man’amkos Wednesday, BeachRAMP at the lagoon and bowling on Thursday, and a health symposium with a heavy emphasis on AIDS/HIV on Friday. A workbook was prepared to guide the students for the duration of the Retreat.

Teresa Miller, teacher’s aide and former SVES student who was assigned to help facilitate the Retreat, returned the first day and reported to SVES principal Janet C. Villagomez of how much she enjoyed the program.

“I wish we had this when I was attending school here,” she said.

The retreat is an educational construct designed by the 6th grade teaching team of Rose Adams, Maria Theresa Camacho, Cristina Yohanan, and J. R. Vergara. Recognizing that many of the 6th graders were undergoing radical changes brought about by puberty, the year’s curriculum map focused on a journey of discovery replete with various rites of passages. The retreat is one of those rites of passage that will culminate with the Farewell and Recognition Ceremony on June 2.

Villagomez and SVES vice principal James Rayphand helped send out the students to the commercial tour buses that took them to their destinations, reminding them that their presence outside the campus is a reflection on the character and identity of the school.

“And by the way,” Rayphand added, as he sidled up to one of the organizers, “I am glad that all I have to do in this massive and complex undertaking is to be present.”