Story by Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas / Photos by Izzy Toledo
THE downpour failed to dampen the spirit of Teacher JC, properly known as, Juan Carlo Candido C. Saquin.
For Saquin, that Saturday in June was a culmination of more than 24 months of building—building capital, building a following, building hope—as he stood in front of a bigger school where he hopes children with special needs could have a second chance.
“This is it,” Saquin said as he opened the doors of his envisioned play school for “second chances” at the second floor of a commercial building along Apolinario Mabini Avenue in Caloocan City.
A blue sign, with embossed letters spelling out “Angel Beats Play and Development Center” in white, hangs on the door and welcome guests, students and parents to the 82-square-meter unit.
Saquin switches on the lights and the signage lit like a sun peeking through thick clouds that rainy day.
A door on the left leads to the Play School area proper where a wall-installed shoe rack welcomes entrants. On the right is a closed-door room that Saquin said is dedicated to play therapy.
A new haven
The walls scream vitality: light, vibrant and pastel colors with murals of trees, grasses, landscapes and columns of colors surround the room.
The ceiling whispers tranquility: a sea of blue hue fills the panels from corner to corner with cotton candy-like white clouds floating. Lights line up the ceiling, appearing like a constellation in darkness.
A slide and a climbing deck stands in the middle of the area.
Three colorful rooms are located to the right. The first room is painted red-and-white resembling a canteen, a second painted plain blue and the third painted in plain red.
Plastic chairs of different colors are stacked on one side.
“I want this to be a special school for children who wants to be prepared for challenges and also for second chances,” the 29-year-old Play Therapist and Occupational Therapist Saquin said.
Not satisfied
TWO years ago, this was all a dream for Saquin, who was 27 that time.
Together with long-time partner Eunigem Angeles, 25, they opened Angel Beats in the Summer of 2017.
The school occupied a 28-sqm unit in a mixed residential-commercial building. They covered the walls with pastel-colored wallpapers, installed a 32-inch LCD TV and sneaked in a small slide.
Saquin borrowed P500,000 to kick-start their new-found business. The amount was raised from a bank loan of P200,000 while the rest he borrowed from his mother who’s an overseas Filipino worker.
He told the BusinessMirror he got the idea of putting up a play school after his “horrible” experience as a “shadow teacher” in a school in West Avenue.
Four years in the work, he realized that the education system for children with special needs has a lot of loopholes.
For one, it doesn’t cater to the needs of every kid, especially of those with special needs, Saquin said.
“So, I told my girlfriend [Angeles], why don’t we open a play school? And so we did.”
Getting education
Saquin was taking up a Master’s degree on Communication Disorder at the University of Visayas when they put up Angel Beats.
Both he and Angeles still had full-time jobs when they opened the school. They also hired two teacher assistants.
“We thought that there was really a big opportunity for such educational institution since there were only few play schools in Caloocan,” Saquin said.
They only had three students in the first three months after opening the school.
The number of students slowly rose to nine until it averaged to just 10 students by end-2017. However, the numbers wasn’t enough to sustain the center’s ballooning expenses with figures close to six digits.
“There was a month when we just earned P12,000. I was just eating monay [bread rolls] all throughout the year. I cannot even afford my favorite pares [sweet beef stew],” JC says. “I had to borrow money from my mother to sustain our operations.”
Saquin said he also restructured their curriculum and center’s activities by aligning it with government’s check-list on early childhood development. He hoped this to be the key driver to attract more students.
Engaging the market
THE couple went and talked to all the doctors in Metro Manila who cater to child development to promote and market their center. Luckily, one doctor agreed to refer her patients pro-bono to Angel Beats.
They also spent P1,000 to boost their promotion in Facebook and targeted working Millennial parents in Caloocan.
In the summer of 2018, the number of their applicants suddenly rose ten-fold. They reached a point when applications were even declined applications as they were already fully booked.
The reason behind the increase? Word of mouth, according to Saquin.
“Our Facebook promotion did work,’ he told the BusinessMirror. “But what worked the most was the word of mouth among the parents of our earlier students.”
Saquin said in Tagalog the parents spread the word their children became verbally expressive after enrolling with the school.
From thereon, the number of students in Angel Beats averaged 50. And the number of kids that learned to speak were more than 100 already.
Loans repaid
SAQUIN said they were able to repay loans and debt as the number of their students continued to rise.
And from a 4-member team, they have expanded to 15, with eight main teachers, three out-sourced therapists, two assistants and two administrative staff.
And towards the end of 2018, a rival play school was established across their center, offering exactly the same type of educational services.
This fueled us to expand our knowledge and learn more, Saquin said. So they applied in a Certificate Program for Play Therapy in a Malaysian University.
“Parang Jollibee lang iyan: hindi naman na niya kailangan mag-advertise pero bakit niya pa ginagawa? Para makipagdikdikan,” Saquin said. [Take Jollibee: the company doesn’t need to advertise but it still does because it wants to compete head on.]
But even before completing their certificate program, the rival school shut down in January.
By a twist of fate, the new Angel Beats school is located at the exact place their competitor used.
Likewise, Angel Beats saw its total student capacity increase from 150 to 250.
Building values
Angel Beats offers three types of services: a two-hour thrice a week child preparedness or play and learn program (session), occupational therapy, and play therapy which are both one-on-one sessions.
Angel Beats holds five child-preparedness and play sessions and learn sessions daily with a capacity of 20 students each session.
During the two-hour session, children undergo activities that improve motor skills, independence, social skills, and intellect.
Saquin explains they incorporate values and lessons in the activities, even if an activity involves tossing a salad.
“It’s not really about food, but it’s about them appreciating their food,” he explained. “We teach them how to cross a road as we want to instill to them community integration.”
Employee engagement
Saquin said 90 percent of their students are children with special needs.
The increase in their number of students shows there are a lot of children with special needs who still suffer from social stigma today.
For one, children with special needs are usually not accepted in regular schools due to their delayed skills development and growth, according to Saquin.
He added the trauma experienced by children from attending these schools prompts parents to avoid the formal education system.
Hence, for parents like Joanna Valles, Angel Beats is a gift from a heaven.
Valles enrolled her daughter, who has a mild autism, in Angel Beats when she was 5 years old. Her daughter would be 7 years old soon and is still with Angel Beats.
She told the BusinessMirror that before enrolling in Angel Beats, her daughter usually becomes antsy in public places like churches or go into tantrums while they’re in a shopping mall.
“Ngayon, hindi na. Ngayon, kapag nagturo siya ng gusto niya and I tell her we do not have money, she’ll understand it and hindi magwawala,” she added. [Now, she doesn’t do these anymore. If she points out something she wants me to buy, she accepts my explanation that we don’t have the money as she doesn’t go into tantrums like before.]
What Valles said she likes the most about Angel Beats is the staff’s close relationship with the parents.
“[Even before we step out from the school to our way home,] they care for our children. They will tell us: ‘Mommy, [you can do this, you can do that]’. And every time we have a concern, they will respond immediately,” she said.
An inspiration
MARIA Rosary Cariaso, one of the pioneer teachers of Angel Beats, still couldn’t believe how the school was able to pull through.
“When we first learned that we are going to expand, I was nervous because that would mean we would have more students. But it’s right thing to do as we could serve more children with special needs,” Cariaso, known as Teacher Milot, said.
“I have learned to love [and deeply appreciate] my profession each day, especially with the kids we’re handling and teaching. They inspire me a lot because in spite their disabilities, they tend to make their lives easier,” she added.
Cariaso, 24, recalled she had a student who lost half of a brain but has showed resiliency in developing skills.
“Hindi siya nakakalakad; nagko-crawl lang siya. Pero kahit anong activities namin ay gagawin niya. Kung sasayaw, sasayaw siya,” she said. [He child could only crawl. But he would try to perform activities at school like dancing.”
Cariaso enthuses her experience with children at Angel Beats inspires her “to achieve more in life.”
“Kasi kung sila nga, kaya, ikaw pa ba?” she added. [If they’re able to do things despite the challenges, how couldn’t we?]
Time, emotions
SAQUIN arranges the wooden alphabet blocks on a shelf alphabetically. He emphasizes that children with special needs needs empathy.
They must learn how to appreciate their emotions and understand the feelings of other people to grow holistically, he explains.
But most of the time, in this day and age, children lack empathy, Saquin said.
“Parents nowadays devalue emotional growth of their children to prioritize their cognitive advancement, which is unfair for them. They are kids; they need affection,” he added. “That’s why [some people] buy emotions.”
According to Saquin, the over-protectiveness of parents also hampers their children’s social and emotional growth.
Children would tend to be bossy and self-centered if they grew in such environment, he added.
“It’s like having a container of emotions. If it’s only filled with ‘super-positive’ feelings and there’s no negative emotion at all, children would feel they are the ones in command in the household and the world revolves around them,” he said. “It should be 50-50.”
One reason some children lack empathy could be the lack of time parents spend with their children. This holds true for Millennial parents and parents who manage big businesses, he added.
“They are so busy that they just ask the yaya [child-minder] or driver to drop their children here,” he said. “And that’s quite sad.”
Another culprit to children’s slow development is too much screen time, which has become a trend in baby-sitting nowadays, he pointed out.
Second chances
SAQUIN said he is willing to offer Angel Beats’ services pro-bono to children with special needs on a case to cases basis, such as those belonging to poor families.
“They just have to show to us that they are really willing to help their children and would cooperate with us in teaching their kids,” he added.
Saquin said they also plan to extend free services to abused children, whether physically or sexually. He said they had a student who grew up in a broken family and was abused by her biological father.
“It broke my heart,” he said. “Imagine, inalisan mo ng panahon maging bata iyong bata.” [He didn’t give the child the chance to be a child.]
Saquin said the idea of providing free services to children in abusive environment comes from his belief in second chances. He said the Angel Beats school just tries to make second chances possible for children with special needs.
“I have a lot of second chances in life. I grew up in a broken family. My mother strove hard for our family, whatever happened, she made things easier for me,” he said. “Bulakbol ako noong high school; pa-cool kid ako noong college. Dumadating yung second chances ko kahit hindi ko hinihingi.” [I was a truant in high school; laid-back during college. But I was handed out second chances without praying for one.]
Hence, Saquin said, he considers Angel Beats students representing who he was in the past.
“Looking back, para ako din yung mga students ko,” he added.
Hence, the name Angel Beats, named after the eponymous anime series that, according to Saquin and Angeles, is a story of second chances.
“It’s about a place for second chances for souls in limbo that have unfinished businesses. It gives them the chance to reach certain goals for happiness,” he said. “Seeing this branch open just makes me happy,” Saquin said, smiling while staring at the building across the road that housed the first branch of Angel Beats, a place that offers second chances.