Teaching the Teachers: Baguio Teacher’s Camp and Its Legacy in the Philippine Educational System

The City of Baguio, Philippines, holds a special place in the history of the Philippine Educational System. A lingering testimony of this legacy is etched in what every mentor knows as the ‘Teacher’s Camp’. 

The forum focuses on the beginnings of what is now the Baguio Teacher’s Camp (BTC), in a place that was once known in Ibaloi as urengao or oily waters, starting with the initial site of the Baguio Industrial School for Igorot children where some buildings were already erected since 1901, It will survey early toponyms or place-names, including the names of initial edifices, that would pervade in this institution through the passage of years.

Highlight will be on the prime movers (pioneering directors and other personalities) and the minutiae of the so-called Teacher’s Vacation Assembly starting the summer of 1908, especially for then American educational administrators and teachers. Emphasis will be on its features that  include the  teachers’ institute, the Chautauqua assembly and the holding of the first anthropological conference in its foundational year.