He climbs a tree to stay in class

Most of the time, learning happens in small, familiar ways—log in, listen, take notes, answer when needed. But there are days when it takes effort you do not usually see. Days when it looks like someone climbing a tree, just to find a signal strong enough to join a class.

That was Kenken Muyco, a third-year Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT) student of Iloilo State University of Fisheries Science and Technology (ISUFST), that day in Iloilo. Not in a classroom, not even inside his house—but up on a 20-foot tree, phone in hand, finding his own way to stay connected and keep learning.

It began like any other online Ethics class.

“Kenken, please open your camera,” Instr. Jonard Verdeflor said, expecting the usual hesitation students give when bandwidth is weak or rooms are not quite presentable. There was a pause. A familiar excuse followed: weak signal. Nothing unusual. It is the kind of line teachers hear often, especially now, when classes stretch beyond walls and into homes, fields, and wherever signal permits.

But when the camera finally flickered on, something did not feel quite right.

There were leaves in the frame. Movement. Light breaking through branches.

At first, it looked like a background filter gone wrong. Then the truth settled in.

Kenken was on a tree.

Not for a joke. Not for attention. But because that was the only place where the signal worked.

For a moment, the class fell into a kind of silence that no microphone can capture. It was the kind of silence that comes when something ordinary suddenly becomes real. What seemed amusing at first slowly revealed itself as something else—a quiet kind of determination.

Kenken is 20 years old, a junior Bachelor of Science in Information Technology student at ISUFST Dingle Campus. He lives with his family—parents and siblings who, in his words, give him steady support as he works through college. Life at home is simple. Not easy, but not bitter either. “Simple lang ang kabuhi namon, pero malipayon man,” he shared. There is no drama in how he says it. Just fact.

His path to IT was not straightforward. In senior high school, there was no computer strand available, so he took TVL instead. But interest has a way of finding its direction. Even then, he knew where he wanted to go. Computers—how they work, how to fix them, how to make them do more—were not just curiosities. They were possibilities.

So he chose IT.

Like most students today, his schedule shifts between classroom and screen. With ongoing tensions abroad affecting fuel supply, transportation, and daily operations, universities like ISUFST have had to adjust—compressing face-to-face classes into selected days while continuing the rest through alternative learning.

On paper, it works.

In reality, it depends.

Because while systems can adjust, signals do not always follow.

Kenken’s daily routine is familiar to many: attend class, listen, complete assignments, review, then work on projects late into the night. IT is not an easy course, and he does not pretend it is. But there is a quiet consistency in how he approaches it. He studies. He tries. He continues.

What is less visible is what it sometimes takes just to show up.

Climbing a tree is not part of the syllabus. But for Kenken, it became part of the routine when connectivity dropped below what learning required. Somewhere between branches and unstable reception, he found a workaround—not ideal, not comfortable, but enough.

Enough to stay in class.

Enough to be counted present.

Enough to keep going.

For Sir Verdeflor, the moment stayed.

“It humbled me,” he would later reflect. “As teachers, we sometimes assume students are working within the same conditions. But they are not. Each one carries a different reality.”

That realization did not come with grand statements. It came quietly, the way most important insights do—after something small reveals something larger.

Professionally, it shifted perspective. Not in lowering expectations, but in recalibrating approach. Teaching, he noted, is not just about content delivery. It is about context. About knowing when a student’s silence is not disengagement, but difficulty. When a delay is not neglect, but limitation.

Kenken’s moment on the tree was not an isolated story. It was a glimpse—of how learning, for some, goes beyond effort in the mind and reaches into the realities of space, access, and circumstance.

Alternative learning modalities were meant to keep education moving. And they have. But they have also made visible the uneven ground students stand on.

Not every student logs in from a quiet room with stable Wi-Fi. Some connect from shared spaces, borrowed devices, prepaid data, a nearby Pisonet, or, in Kenken’s case, elevated ground.

This is where the story could easily turn heavy. But it does not have to.

Because alongside these realities are also responses.

ISUFST, like many institutions trying to keep pace with these changes, has taken steps to support its students—one of them being free internet access in key areas on campus. It is not a perfect fix. But it is a start. A quiet acknowledgment that the gaps are real, and that something is being done, however gradual.

Faculty members adjust too, often in ways that go unnoticed—recording lectures, allowing a bit more time, offering alternative tasks, and keeping communication open.

These may not be sweeping solutions. But they matter.

They make it possible for students like Kenken to keep going without being left behind.

And still, that image of him on the tree stays—not because it is unusual, but because it reveals something familiar.

What we see in class—attendance, participation, submissions—is only part of the story. There is always more beneath it.

It asks for something simple but not always easy: to understand before concluding, to support without always having complete solutions, and to keep building systems that respond to real conditions.

Kenken does not describe what he did as extraordinary. To him, it was simply what had to be done.

And maybe that is why it stays.

Not the height of the tree.

Not the surprise of the moment.

Just the quiet decision to climb anyway. (Herman Lagon | PAMMCO)