Representing Waipahu High School’s motto, “My Choice, My Voice, My Future,” Arts and Communication teachers Ms. Michelle Aquino and Ms. Thelma Madriaga are beginning their sabbaticals this semester. Ms. Madriaga will take three theater classes and an English enrichment class at Leeward Community College.  Aquino will travel to the Philippines to finish research for her dissertation on dallot, an Ilocano poetry performance technique, at the University of the Philippines and the National Library.

Madriaga chose to focus on theater classes to learn strategies to help her students improve on stage.

Madriaga’s father often told her, “A fool thinks that he knows but a wise man knows that he does not know.”

Madriaga says, “I would be a fool to stop learning. I want to keep going because there are many things I do not know. I want to be that wise man who knows that I don’t know everything.”

Aquino chose to cover dallot in her dissertation because it is already fading in the Filipino community and younger generations probably do not know it exists.

When Ms. Aquino planned to do her sabbatical, she knew it would be difficult to do full-time because she had to travel. She wanted to travel to the Philippines so she could do interviews with native dallot practitioners and understand the culture in those areas.

Aquino, who has been teaching for 18 years, will be graduating with an EdD, focusing on educational leadership and indigenous education.