ISUFST students win national EdukALIDAD research tilt

1 of 16

By Herman M. Lagon | PAMMCO

ISUFST student-researchers did it again — this time on a national stage where a growth mindset found its wings.

Four students from the Iloilo State University of Fisheries Science and Technology Main Campus-Tiwi Site emerged as champions in the Research Presentation category of National EdukALIDAD 2026.

Valerie Saunders, Kayzel Joy Villa, Alisa Jane Arlos, and Rey-Ann Quiro, coached by Dr. Jeena Amoto-Torred, bested other entries after months of revisions, consultations, practice runs, doubts, and steady preparation.

The national event, held March 28, 2026, at Diversion 21 Hotel in Iloilo City, gathered 26 institutions under the theme “Future-Shaping the Next-Generation Learners for a Globally Competitive Nation.”

Organized by West Visayas State University’s College of Education and Education Student Council, the event brought together future teachers in four major categories: Prof Ed Quiz Bee, Teaching Demonstration, Instructional Materials Making, and Research Presentation.

That made the win weighty.

It was not a campus exercise or a cozy local showcase, but a national stage with real pressure, real competition, and little room for empty confidence.

Amoto-Torred described the Research Presentation category as highly competitive, with strong entries from different institutions.

The challenge, she said, was not only to have a solid study but also to communicate it clearly, convincingly, and with enough grounding to make the research feel lived, not merely rehearsed.

The University of Antique placed second, while the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos placed third.

ISUFST took first place.

The order matters, but the deeper point is this: the top spot was earned in a field where nobody simply stumbled into excellence.

Kayzel remembered the moment with the kind of honesty that gives victory its proper texture.

She felt like crying, she said, because all the sleepless nights of revising, rereading, and analyzing suddenly made sense.

Valerie, for her part, described a wave of gratitude, first to God and then to the institution she felt she represented with every hour of work.

Rey-Ann said her heart skipped a beat, and she could not believe it at first.

Alisa, in her own simple way, felt overwhelmed that their hard work had truly paid off.

The four reactions differed in tone but shared one truth: this was not luck in a blazer.

It was labor finally becoming visible.

Before the results, confidence and doubt lived in the same room.

Kayzel believed in the study but still felt the sting of comparison when she saw the quality of other entries.

Rey-Ann admitted they were nervous and kept second-guessing themselves.

Alisa also had moments of uncertainty.

Valerie stood out for her steadier confidence, much of it rooted in the trust she placed in their training and in their mentor’s guidance.

That mix made the team believable.

They were not robots reciting data.

They were students who knew the work, feared the possibility of falling short, and kept showing up anyway.

Their victory also says something about ISUFST itself.

Although known for fisheries, the public university in Iloilo has continued to build strength in education, research, and other academic fields.

This win shows what it has been building all along — students shaped by values, strengthened by guidance, and lifted by collaboration.

The team’s story also points to something bigger taking shape within ISUFST.

The university also secured first place in Demo Teaching and second place in Instructional Materials, building on last year’s EdukALIDAD 2025 sweep of the top three spots in Research Presentation and a third-place finish in Demo Teaching.

The study that looked past scores

The winning study did not chase the flashiest trend.

It asked a question teachers quietly carry: How do we help children stay when math becomes difficult?

Anyone who has seen a child shut down knows the weight of that moment.

The study focused on Grade 1 learners, using growth mindset strategies to help them stay engaged, manage frustration, and keep trying.

Grounded in Dweck’s growth mindset and a classroom-based action research approach, the study followed five Grade 1 learners over six weeks.

Using observations, journals, interviews, and student work, the team found something simple at its core: When children value effort and stop fearing mistakes, they stay and try.

What followed was simple but powerful.

Learners became more focused, more patient, and more willing to try again.

With teachers and parents guiding them, discipline did not feel like pressure — it became a habit.

That matters greatly in early mathematics, where frustration can become identity far too quickly.

Valerie gave the study its most human translation: It is about helping young learners build faith in their own ability to improve.

For her, self-discipline grows when children are guided through challenges in a way that helps them trust themselves.

Kayzel saw the same concern from the perspective of a future teacher who wants learners to improve in mathematics not through fear, but through support.

Rey-Ann emphasized belief, effort, and the willingness to keep trying even when it is hard.

Alisa boiled it down to patience and determination.

Together, their voices gave the study a rare quality: academic seriousness without losing the classroom child behind the terms.

One of the most compelling things about the research is that it refused the lazy assumption that better math learning begins only with better content delivery.

The team chose to focus on self-discipline and growth mindset because too many studies, as they noted, emphasize academic outcomes while ignoring the process of learning itself.

That is a subtle but brave shift.

It says a child’s relationship with learning matters just as much as a test score.

For teachers, especially in the early grades, that is not a decorative insight.

It is daily survival.

Valerie pointed to a finding that should linger with educators: The learners shifted from being fearful of mistakes to taking academic risks.

That is the sort of sentence that looks neat in a results section but means a great deal in real life.

It means a child raised a hand again.

It means tears did not arrive as quickly.

It means confusion stopped being shame and became part of trying.

For teachers today, worn down by outcomes and overloaded expectations, that reminder feels timely: Students often learn best when they feel safe enough to fail in front of someone who still believes in them.

Four winners, four lived reasons

Kayzel Joy Villa’s story carries the grit of someone who does not have the luxury of a single responsibility.

At 22, the Bachelor of Elementary Education student and working student has had to balance school with work while helping support a family whose father drives a tricycle.

That arrangement has no cinematic glow to it.

It is tiring, practical, and full of little sacrifices that rarely make it into polished success stories.

From that life came the discipline she brought to the team.

When she talked about resilience, time, patience, and priorities, it did not sound like advice — it sounded like lived truth.

Outside school, she turns to art.

It fits.

Even as a researcher, she keeps space for imagination.

Valerie Saunders brings another kind of strength into the picture.

At 28, married, and a mother of three boys, she prepared for the competition while caring for a newborn.

That detail alone changes how one should read her composure.

Her path has required her to balance coursework, family life, cultural differences in marriage, and the stubborn public doubt that sometimes greets women who try to do many things well at once.

Motherhood did not make her smaller — it made things clearer.

She learned what matters and stayed there.

She shows up, keeps things real, and brings that into her teaching too: seeing her students, supporting them, and helping them keep going, one step at a time.

Alisa Jane Arlos stands in the team with her own hard-earned steadiness.

At 22, also a Bachelor of Elementary Education student, she has juggled school, work, motherhood, and a difficult family health situation, with a father working as an ice cream vendor and a mother who is a dialysis patient.

Her responses may be simpler in phrasing, but their substance is unmistakable.

She knows what it means to keep going while carrying responsibilities bigger than school.

She understands time not as an abstract productivity concept, but as something you stretch because you must.

She also keeps a disposition of helping others, and that instinct matters.

In education, intellect can impress, but helpfulness sustains.

Rey-Ann Quiro adds yet another texture to the team: enterprise.

At 22, she is a Bachelor of Elementary Education student, a businesswoman, and an older sibling who helps with her school needs and even contributes a little to the support of her younger brothers and sisters.

Her father works on a sugarcane farm.

Her mother does housekeeping.

She grew up with four siblings, all still studying, so life was always shared.

But when she talks about her parents, it is with pride — never apology.

She says their work never limited her dreams.

She learned early to budget, take responsibility, and work hard, and she still finds joy in cooking and trying new recipes.

There is something beautifully teacher-like in that combination of resourcefulness and warmth.

Taken together, the four do not look like a neat poster version of student excellence.

They look better than that.

They look real.

One works while studying.

One is a mother of three.

One navigates work, caregiving, and family illness.

One runs a small business to stay in school and help siblings.

This is why their championship resonates.

It was not built by students protected from life.

It was built by students carrying life with them into the research room and still finding the discipline to produce something rigorous, relevant, and humane.

Their teaching philosophies also meet in a meaningful place.

Kayzel believes teaching is about connecting with learners and understanding their needs.

Valerie believes the teacher’s role is to help others discover their potential.

Alisa believes teaching should inspire and support students.

Rey-Ann believes learners should be encouraged to do their best, learn from mistakes, and keep growing.

Each says it differently, but they are all circling the same moral center: Education is not performance first.

It is relationship first.

Perhaps that is why their research on growth mindset felt so credible.

They were not simply presenting a theory.

They were, in many ways, presenting themselves.

The mentor, the culture, the larger lesson

Amoto-Torred’s role in this story is not ornamental.

If you listen closely, you can tell who shaped the journey.

For them, it was her — the one who kept them going back, revising, and improving, even when they were already tired.

She helped them find their voice in the study, not just memorize it.

When doubt slowly crept in, as it often does, she did not push harder — she reminded them they were capable.

In the end, her presence was not loud.

But it stayed with them, and that made all the difference.

In this case, it deserves to remain visible.

She also offered the most revealing description of why this team won: They embodied their own research on growth mindset.

They accepted criticism.

They kept revising.

They did not complain.

Even when she transferred from the Poblacion site to the Tiwi site, they continued to show up for consultations.

That detail may sound small, but it is exactly the sort of small thing that separates promising students from championship-caliber ones.

A lot of people like the idea of excellence.

Fewer like the repetition it requires.

This group, by her account, endured the repetition.

The preparation lasted more than a year.

Because these students had been under her in Research in Education, she guided them from the foundations of research all the way to developing and communicating their own study.

That kind of long mentorship matters.

It explains why the final presentation felt grounded in understanding rather than memorization.

By the time they stood on stage, they were not merely remembering slides.

They were reporting a journey they had already lived together.

This is also where ISUFST deserves its due.

The students consistently described a campus culture that is supportive, excellence-driven, and rooted in discipline, curiosity, teamwork, and continuous improvement.

Amoto-Torred added another layer: ISUFST students carry a hunger to prove they belong on bigger stages, and the College of Education has teachers willing to make that possible, even when funds are initially lacking.

There is a grit in that picture that fits the university’s larger vision of becoming a leading and empowering research university.

Big goals, after all, are often carried forward by very unglamorous acts of support.

“This kind of achievement reminds us that learning is not about getting the right answer quickly, but about growing through challenge, supporting one another, and turning understanding into something that helps others learn,” Amoto-Torred said.

ISUFST President Dr. Nordy D. Siason Jr. pointed to what this means for the university.

“At the heart of achievements like this is not just talent, but the willingness to keep learning and to stay with the process. That is the kind of growth we hope to see in every ISUFST learner,” Siason said.

There is something quietly contemporary, too, about the team’s achievement.

In an age that rewards speed, short attention spans, and polished surfaces, they won with a study about patience, persistence, effort, and emotional regulation in 6-year-olds learning math.

That is almost subversive in the best way.

They did not win by sounding trendy.

They won by paying attention to what children actually need.

What children need, it turns out, is not so different from what adults need: support, belief, structure, and someone reminding them that mistakes are not the end of the story.

Their messages to fellow ISUFST students reflect that same grounded wisdom.

Believe in yourself, Kayzel said.

Be brave enough to take the first step, Valerie urged.

Keep trying and do not fear mistakes, Rey-Ann advised.

Alisa wants the achievement to inspire learners and communities toward self-discipline and growth mindset.

None of them talked like celebrity winners.

They sounded like future teachers already practicing the kind of encouragement they hope to give others.

That may be the loveliest part of this whole story.

They did not become less human by winning.

They became more recognizably themselves.

This championship means more than a trophy line in a campus report.

What they achieved goes beyond the award.

Coming from a community that knows resilience, they produced research that was both strong and sincere.

In the end, it reminds us that the best education does not begin on big stages, but in small classrooms — where growth starts with effort, support, and hope.

Brief explanation: Removed a repeated paragraph, corrected AP style issues, tightened long sentences, converted “Grade One” and “six-year-olds” to AP number style, standardized dashes with spaces, and added light context on ISUFST as a public university in Iloilo based on its official site. (isufst.edu.ph)