DWAD’s pride: A blind alumna
Maria Consuelo Tabije is one Dagupena and alumna of Divine Word Academy of Dagupan (Grade School-Batch 1977), who has shown the way to succeed in life despite a serious physical handicap.
She’s blind.
She lost her eyesight when she was in Grade Four but completed her studies and achieved more for herself through the years.
Today, Tabije, an active church lector or reader in Braille at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and at other local churches in Queensland where she lives, teaches the vision-impaired in Australia.
She will be one of the school’s graduates whose successful career will be celebrated at the homecoming on November 21 in Dagupan City.
She finished Grades V and VI in one year through the Acceleration Programme for the Intellectually-Gifted Students. The following year, Maria Consuelo again completed her high school education at the Philippine National High School for the Blind in just one year as a result of the Philippine Education Placement Test (PEPT) programme of the Department of Education where she obtained top scores promoting her from First Year to Fourth Year high school.
She was the first recipient of the PEPT programme.
She obtained her degree of Bachelor of Science in Education, Major in English and Minor in History, cum laude at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila.
Right after graduation, she taught at Ramon Magsaysay High School, Manila-teaching the vision-impaired students in the Special Education Unit.
Maria pursued higher education and earned her Master’s Degree in Special Education at the Jesuit-run Boston College, Massachusetts, under the U.S. Fulbright Scholarship Programme. She was the first Fulbright blind scholar at Boston College.
Her sister, Marylou Tabije Halls, second honorable mention of Batch 1973 and bank officer in Queensland, Australia is also attending the homecoming.
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