SPECIAL CLUB RECOGNITION

School News  • April 29, 2023

Written by Benj Mari Gulla

On the 29th of April 2023, APEC Schools held an event wherein special student organizations such as the Student Council, AMPLIFY, and Peer Facilitators were bestowed with recognition and awards based on their performance and activities held within the past academic year. Each of the 20 APEC branches had their own versions of these student organizations, and all of them were in attendance that day. This means that a total of 60 student organizations were represented, each one eager to have their efforts acknowledged.

The event started at 9:00 AM with a flag ceremony led by APEC officials. The Philippine national anthem, Lupang Hinirang was sung altogether and a prayer was conducted. Following that, attendance was checked via a roll-call in which the names of each APEC site were called and met with enthusiastic reactions from the students representing the branch that was called.

At 09:15 AM, the awarding finally began. The first student organization to be given recognition was AMPLIFY. There were three categories for the AMPLIFY awards: Writer of the Year, Artist of the Year, and Content Creator of the Year. From the Ortigas Extension branch, Benj Mari Gulla (B09-10-S1-2) won Writer of the Year, Aisha Aguilar (B09-07-S1-1) won Artist of the Year, and Mariella Libunao (B09-10-S2-1) won Content Creator of the Year. During this segment, updates on new plans for AMPLIFY were shared. Some of them being One Amplify, plans for more original contents and collaborations, and Amplify Journalympics.

After awarding for AMPLIFY had concluded, a student named Marius Perez was then called onto the stage for a song break/intermission. He sang the song “Nangangamba” by Zack Tabudlo, which was met with lots of positive responses from the students.

Around 9:40 AM, the meet and greet with APEC's chief academic officer, Mark Sy began. The two hosts first asked him a few questions about running APEC Schools, and also a few personal questions. Ten minutes later, the student leaders were finally given the opportunity to ask the CEO himself some questions they had on their minds. Some of the questions were as follows:

• "How did you become the Chief Academic Officer?"

• "Were there any regrets you had?"

• "How do you see APEC's education system from now"

• "How do you deal with stress and pressure?"

• "How did you face your struggles?"

• "How did you come up with the Open Assessment system?"

...and more. To which the man replied with insightful answers to all of them. After answering the last question, he shared some of his future plans that he was preparing for APEC, such as possibly implementing field trips, and more. He gave a sweet thank-you speech before leaving the stage.

Break started at 10:30 AM, arriving shortly after the Meet-and-Greet had concluded. The attendees immediately spread throughout the campus, basically occupying all of its corners. The most crowded spot, however, was the canteen. It was packed with students lining up to the different food and drink stalls available. 

The event resumed at 11:05 AM — It was time for the awarding of the Peer Facilitators. In total, there were five categories candidates could win. The Service award, Collaboration award, Innovation award, Passion award, and the Peer Facilitator of the Year award. Awarding was conducted per cluster. From the Ortigas Extension branch, Heather Roque (B09-09-S2-1) won the Innovation award among the Peer Facilitators of Cluster A. After the awarding, future plans for peer facilitators were also shared.

At 11:42 AM, the final awarding segment began. The last awarding segment was for the APEX-SL projects led by the Student Council of each of the APEC branches. There were a total of 8 categories, in which a branch could either win a Silver or Gold award for, with Gold being the more impressive of the two. The categories were as follows: Marketing and Teaching Materials award, Project Design award, Integrated Approach award, Resilience and Empathy award, Promoting Student Excellence award, Social Responsibility award, and the Most Outstanding Project of the Year award.