Access to education is considered a right for every citizen, and it is highly prioritized. This provides more opportunities for students who were unable to learn before. Multi-grade teaching is one important policy option for providing access to education for learners in remote areas (Taole, 2014). However, teaching within a multi-grade curriculum presents several challenges for elementary teachers. Therefore, teachers need to show resilience by utilizing various coping mechanisms to effectively convey learning to multi-grade learners. This study aimed to explore the coping mechanisms employed by teachers in handling multi-grade classes. The researcher used a qualitative method with a phenomenological design and conducted in-depth interviews as the main strategy. The gathered data were categorized to produce major themes and formulate meanings. The analysis of the data in this study was patterned on Colaizzis phenomenological descriptive method. The study found that teachers have a hard time adapting to multi-grade teaching due to various reasons. Nonetheless, the teacher-participants have tried their best to adapt to multi-grade teaching through the following actions: following the most essential learning competencies specified in the teaching and learning guide, following the teaching principle of easy to hard or complex topics, utilizing varied teaching approaches such as differentiated teaching, direct observation, peer-teaching, and flexible teaching-learning, preparing instructional materials before the day of the class, considering learners diverse learning styles, using localized materials, the internet, and libraries, and managing and maximizing time effectively, are ways to adapt to or cope with the multi-grade teaching and learning process.

Multi-grade Curriculum; Coping Mechanism; Adaptation; Multi-grade Teaching; Elementary Teachers; Multi-grade Learners