Talks

Rumblings…


I’ve had a busy week preparing test for my pupils. I never thought that it would be this difficult considering that I am teaching primary levels. But, it is. I have to make my test simple enough to be understood but also difficult enough to challenge my pupils.

I don’t know if I had done a good job. But after checking the test papers and seeing the result, I am satisfied with it. I know now where I have to focus on in my next lessons—prepositions, that monster. It is so difficult to teach prepositions because they sometimes defy the laws of logic.

I am having difficult time trying to manage my grade 1 students. They are unruly; they try to test limit of my patience. I’ve tried everything. But if you talk to them alone, and listen to their stories they are loveable. But when they are together, its like trying to fight the weather.

Maybe if I spend more time alone, talking and bonding with my students, they’ll…hmmm… pity their overage student teacher. Truth is, I’m getting attached to them especially the most difficult pupil in the class. He jumps on me, hold my hands. When we are not in the classroom, he treats me respectfully, always answer with “po” at “opo” , he rides with me on the motorbike…I don’t know, now I understand why some teachers never get married—they get too attached to their students.

I sometimes wonder what I am doing teaching English but after taking over a Filipino class, hmmm…I never thought that teaching Filipino would be difficult since it is my native tongue, but it is. It is difficult to teach Filipino, in fact, more difficult than teaching English. If a student asks me what’s the difference between “rin´at “din”, all I can say is that you say “din” when you are in Cainta and you “rin” when you’re in Morong-Cardona. I don’t know the Filipino grammar rules. I take Filipino for granted but simple things like the difference between “rin” and “din” (“too” in English), honestly speaking, stumps me.

I am…hmm…mad because when my school records were evaluated, the campus registrar found out that my scholastic record was missing from my file. I am a graduating student and I have to get my papers in order. The registrar referred to the guidance counselor’s office with the hope that they have the original copy of my files. But after a dusty search (to tell the truth I felt a little guilty making the new guidance counselor rummage through old files), the search was futile—my files was missing. Even the new Guidance Counselor was puzzled about the missing file. The former Guidance counselor unfortunately was moved out of her office rather abruptly leaving behind unorganized files and lots of rumors. I am beginning to think that because of my critical role as a former critical “Punong Patnugot” someone is trying to get at back me in the campus. Or, it could simply be my super-bloated ego trying to tell me that I am an important person in the campus, important enough to drive people to do evil things.

Naaahhhh….maybe the file simply vanished a la X-Files.

Writing

I am doing a little experiment on how to make my grade school pupil, especially the grades one and two, write. It is difficult enough to make them read, how much more to make them write! I have read some of John Holt’s idea about reading and writing and I seriously take his “doctrine” that motivating children to read and write is the primary concern of the teacher, and the rests are accidentals. (I don’t know if I said it accurately.) And somehow his ideas (not all of them) inspire me to try to be creative with my approaches to teahing.

To encourage my pupils to write, I usually give them a piece of bond paper, tell them to draw anything they like on it like robots, or cartoon characters or dinosaurs; anything that would stir up their imagination. And when they are already busy drawing, I would tell story of space battles, of wars, of a stray dog ripping my dog’s ear, a fairy tale or I would just make up things, anything to stir up my pupil’s imagination so that they could write and express without any inhibition. (Holt mentioned how Professor S.I. Hayakawa invented a technique in teaching writing to his freshman students—he tells his students to write about anything, any topic, for thirty minutes without stopping. Of course I am not teaching freshmen. I am teaching grade school children who are non native English speakers. But how will I know if this method works at grade school level unless I try it. The method may sound like Freudian or psychotherapeutic blah, blah…but ...who cares! It’s up to the teacher to be discreet on whatever their students may have consciously or unconsciously revealed in their writings.)

I am getting good results. One grade three pupil wrote 80, a grade two wrote 52 and a grade one pupil wrote 25 simple sentences in English, the minimum I got was five simple sentences that is grammatically more acceptable than some of my classmates (excuse me my math and science major classmates) writings. And all I did was to tell them to draw something, or to look at a book and write anything they can write about in there. (Sometimes I tell them that I could see sentences floating around the classroom like, “The light is on. There is a poster on the wall. Agybert is under the chair.” Etc.)

I am surprised at the result!

One of the difficulties I encountered was on translation. My pupils ask me to translate Filipino words into English. I ask them how they will use it in a sentence but I know that if I become too technical, they may loose interest in what they are doing. So, I just write translations of Filipino words into English on the white board. The good thing about this is that they are adding more to their vocabulary bank with very little effort on their part, but the downside is, problem will arise in usage. But these things, grammar and usage, are easy to fix as long as the pupil is writing. The most difficult problem to fix is when pupils begin to hate writing-- when they stop writing.

I limit my lectures to five to ten minutes because, honestly, they are boring!

I will continue to write some of my observations here on a weekly basis, and I welcome ideas, comments and suggestion on teaching no matter how unorthodox they are.

(Maybe I will include this on the narratives of my practice teaching. But then again who will read them in the campus! This is why up to now I am not motivated to revise my thesis on student organizations and leadership because I know it would not be read.)

I will try to write something about child behavior too, from my student teaching experience, that is, if I can or if I could.

My dehydrated and miserable classmates

I often bump into my classmates doing their practice teaching at the elementary school where I graduated. During the first weeks, they were energetic and they still look fresh and enthusiastic. After a few weeks, I saw them again and I was surprised at the deterioration. One kept asking. “Kuya George, am I still beautiful.” Of course they are all beautiful but they looked stressed, dehydrated and miserable. They told me that their cooperating teacher was being mean to them. This is the problem with practice teaching in most public schools—some cooperating teachers get back at the student teachers for the way they were treated by their former cooperating teachers.

Some cooperating teachers treat their student teachers contemptuously because they know that student teachers have no way of getting back at them. For some say this treatment is good because it builds the character of the student teachers, the thinking is like that of fraternity hazing. But in reality, like fraternity hazing that breed violence, these “violence” done against student teachers begets “violence.” It becomes a cycle. And somehow, in some way this cycle trickled down to the students and pupils.

I pity my classmates but there’s nothing that could be done about it unless the DepED sees this as a real problem and formulate solutions for it.

I have my problems with student teaching too, but not from my cooperating teacher, and definitely not from the school, what is giving me problem is my waking up in the morning and sleeping late at night. My gulay, I am a night person and waking up early is the most difficult thing for me to do!

I am hoping to find a night elementary school where I could work at my convenience, but then again, who would I be teaching? Grade school Vampires!

But then again, that could be fun…

Reading Class

I wonder if I am teaching at a public school and the principal suddenly checks on my reading class. There she would find some of my pupils reading their books behind the movable whiteboard, lying on the cement floor and some would be reading their books with their feet resting on the armchairs. I wonder what the principal would do or say. Hmmm…maybe I won’t last a month because I will be fired immediately for the reason that I can’t manage my class.

During my elementary school days, our English teacher would always, like a broken vinyl record player or a skipping CD, recite the rules on reading: Back straight, the book held by two hands at a certain degree, read with your eyes and not with your lips, no slouching, and no talking. These are the things that I remember about my grade school reading classes no stories, no authors, no poems, nothing, just these rules. So, I and my classmates--this is hindsight—may unknowingly understood reading as something done physically like manual labor or like an industrial arts activity with those procedures and steps—reading became a tedious, dull, mechanical, dreary activity. So, most of my classmates learned to read but they did not learn to love reading.

Now, I’m a teacher and I have hindsight not to commit the same mistakes my traditional reading teacher did (I don't blame her, by the way.). I now know, and I will compromise anything within reason to make my student read. If they want to read doing a headstand, I would allow it as long as I see that they are enjoying their reading. If they are debating, shouting, discussing about what they are reading, I will not and I do not stop them. I just tell them to keep their voices down.

It is becoming more and more difficult to make children read and if breaking all these military like, inane and useless rules could encourage my students to read, I would break them with no questions asked, no señor, habla de cartolina de kwaderno de artista, I would break them.
So, what would a public school principal do…nah, the question is what I would do if she forces me to adopt the traditional way of teaching reading. Here’s what I would do, I would kidnap the principal and then force
her to read a copy of Dostoevsky’s book and tell her to read it sitting back straight, two hands holding the book, read with the eyes and not with the lips….I am sure she would be dead before she even finish the first page.

It’s good that I’m teaching at my church school; I can experiment.