The Department of Education (DepEd) has developed modules and lesson exemplars on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction (MDRR) to be used by teachers and students to help prepare schools in times of disasters.

Education Secretary Jesli A. Lapus said that DepEd is set to start the integration of these materials in the secondary curriculum starting June 2010.

Lapus added that the country, being prone to natural calamities because of its geographic location, need not be helpless when visited by typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural hazards. “These are the realities we have to live with. We should know what to do when disasters happen to lessen the devastation,” he said.

Knowing that these disasters result in the death of many Filipinos and cause extensive damage to infrastructure and crops, Lapus said that the newly developed lesson exemplars and teacher/student modules were the department’s response to the recurrence of disasters in the country.

“Safety lessons need to be taught in schools to reduce risk when disasters strike. These lesson exemplars educate our teachers and students how to respond to the situation,” he said.

The MDRR is an initiative in partnership with the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC). This is also part of the project on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction into Development, Policy, and Implementation in the Education sector.

"The main goal of this project is to educate our school children on the different kinds of hazards and how to respond to each of these when the need arises," Lapus said.

While some parents, teachers and students might see it as an additional subject, DepEd Undersecretary Antonio Inocentes said that it's just integrating disaster risk reduction management into the curriculum.

“We want to prepare our students and teachers so they would know what to do before, during, and after disasters. The focus actually is awareness, preparedness, and action,” he said.

Inocentes also added that these materials aim to educate the school children and prepare them for disasters and calamities that may strike without warning like the recent high intensity quakes that shook Haiti, Chile and Cagayan Valley. "These materials will be distributed to various schools in NCR, Region V, VIII, IX, CARAGA, and CAR. These areas are included in the 47 most vulnerable provinces in the country," he said.

Specifically developed for secondary curriculum, the lesson exemplars and teacher/student modules will be integrated in subjects Science I and Araling Panlipunan I because the learning competencies under these subjects were found suitable to be "points of entries" or lessons/topics were the topic of disaster can naturally be integrated.

These lesson exemplars also contain strategies and methods of teaching disaster risk reduction while the modules, on the other hand, will serve as reference materials for students and teachers.