World Water Monitoring Challenge website featured Diclum Elementary School

Diclum Elementary School joins WWMC the Fourth Time
12/14/2012
Submitted by Terence Dave S. Pelingon, M. Ed.

 

On their last school day before going on a Christmas break, 63 sixth grade students of Diclum Elementary School in the Philippines ecstatically trooped to Diclum River for World Water Monitoring Challenge 2012, the fourth time the school had since 2009. Two classes participated, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Each class had 5 groups and each of them was assigned at five different spots within the stretch of Diclum River, including its surrounding marsh. Though it was a very hot day, students enjoyed basking under the sun just to know the current state of river where the life of nearby neighborhoods of the barrio circumvents. It was spring tide when the WWMC was held, so the students were surprised to see an unusual level of river water being pushed upstream by sea water near its mouth. There were also lots of floating debris as the water level reached further inland. The air temperature was 35ºC while the average water temperature was 29 ºC. Turbidity at site 1 was 40JTU while it’s 0 JTU at site 2. The DO was 4 ppm, average pH was 7.6, and the average % saturation was 51.8. This year, the Water Environment Federation through Ms. Lorien Walsh had donated to the school a box of ten WWMC kits fresh from Virginia. A sigh of relief for the class which had been using a single kit for the whole class in the past three years it had been joining the WWMC. With these new kits, the class held the event this year more efficiently as the students no longer had to squabble over scant equipment. Being a public-supported school in a rural barrio of the Philippines, the Diclum Elementary School faced numerous hardships with regard to financing children's activities in their Science class. Yet with the leadership of its science teacher, Mr. Terence Dave S. Pelingon, and with the support of the benefactors both local and foreign, the school achieved success and placed itself on the world stage.