'Barrio Sipsipnget' and Other Good Stuff: Professor JANET TIBALDO on Communicating Empathetically

Reaping the fruits of her maternal, academic, and Christ-like labor, our esteemed speaker gives us an inside scoop on work-life balance as a teacher striving in a global pandemic, in more or less a hundred minutes.

You think you have a lot on your plate more than you can masticate? Tibaldo's students sit in awe as they are filled in on her school-wise life updates: finishing her PhD during lockdown meant a virtual graduation that would not exactly live up to the actual march to the stage and an exciting journal article in the editing pipeline, already accepted for publication early November 2020.

An alumna herself of Saint Louis University (SLU)'s Mass Communication Program, Janet S. Tibaldo also acquired her MA in Language Education and PhD Language in Baguio's top university. Born in the Martial Law Era and an activist prior to her heydays as a tertiary educator, Tibaldo of the Department of Language and Communication in SLU's School of Teacher Education and Liberal Arts (STELA) remains emboldened to continuously inspire her students even from behind a screen. At exactly 9:30 A.M., Tibaldo appears before her Block 1A students for a virtual press conference, March 9 to supply answers to their most pressing questions.

Photo from Up Close & Personal, Block 1A's press conference

Call Her "Professor"

Although her credentials have yet to be updated on her PACE member bio and in other organizations that she is a part of, Tibaldo has recently embraced her full title as professor and is now using it as her email signature. 

"I am actually really stressed," Tibaldo admits. "[But] with Christ who strengthens me, I am able to manage it somehow although I have to admit that I also underwent some psychological coaching for the last months because I needed it. I knew I needed it."

Tibaldo reveals that she was actually offered the position Department Head some time back but gladly declined, given her contentment and love for handling young people. She spills that she previously wanted to be in the research department of the Philippine Information Agency-Manila (PIA), working for the government. 

Screenshot of the event held March 9, 2021. Names have been omitted to protect the participants' privacies.

Her Relationships: Family, Connections, and 'Vertical'

Like every responsible Filipino citizen, Tibaldo does not digress from sharing her firm political views. Although both her picks in the 2016 presidential elections won president and vice president  respectively, she exclaims that "One Duterte is enough." Needing media literacy and knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of what is currently going on are just a few things she emphasized for first-time voters in the upcoming 2022 elections.

Of the very little online presence that she is maintaining, Tibaldo champions getting off social media and giving up on toxic people with a quick unfollow. Whether her educator hat is off or on, she dons the title of loving mother to her two kids; she only wishes that they "connect with whom they should be connecting with so that they would still know their way and they would have a map." She values her relationship with her family as much as as the time she spends with the Lord.

"The silver lining for me would have to be abstract, it's more on hope: hope that I am able to get from my vertical relationship with Him, that there is a better day for me not only career-wise but for everyone else," muses Tibaldo on the looming pandemic.

At Least One Good Thing

The concept behind the controversial "Barrio Sipsipnget" is not as deep as we thought it would be, but actually quite the contrary. She makes use of a fictional name to avoid conflict when citing examples of locations necessarily included in an article. Using an inexistent name only for educational purposes is one of the best practices in teaching Journalism that we can have nowadays. The opposite would be deemed unreliable in the actual write-up when fact-checking is not taken seriously.

On constructive criticism, Tibaldo narrates a certain newscasting activity in one of her Broadcasting classes pre-COVID. Her students already know how each activity is concluded: post-mortems utilized in the Broadcast industry are applied at the classroom level. She always brings it upon herself to find one positive thing to emphasize to her class. In return, spirits are uplifted and points for improvement are made for the succeeding team efforts.

She always makes it a point to find the radiant in the mundane, we're all human anyway!

Photo from the Up Close & Personal deck, image from Ma'am Janet's PACE bio.

Tibaldo believes in the overflowing potential posed by the recent batch of K-12 graduates; the additional two years in high school allowed them to mature emotionally and grow independently. She advises everyone to get out of their comfort zones and to try everything career-wise, even if it means working as an employee before becoming an employer. 

"Take advantage of what you have right now: technology. When it comes to learning, your classroom is the world. With being a voracious reader comes other stuff related to communication," she explains.

Her constant reminder is to put your heart into whatever you are doing. To take every intellectual opinion with a grain of salt and to accept every learning opportunity in a heartbeat is all part of the fiery passion that plays a role in all her life stints. From English teacher to PhD in Language holder, we are here to listen insofar as the circumstances permit. After all, experience and example are a student's best friend.

"Given all the things that I'm doing if you only knew, I could say that given this limitation of time and all the tasks that I am forced to do, I think I'm still giving all the best that I can given this situation that we are in right now."