Teaching Filipino

This class drives me crazy.

Filipino is now one of my teaching loads, aside from music, arts and character education. I was offered to teach one English class but I have taught English for almost five years and, to tell the truth, my English sucks so I opted to take up teaching Filipino since I haven't taught this subject.

It's a new challenge for me. Maybe next school year I would ask for a math teaching load for fun and, maybe, to kill the monotony of teaching: a little bit of everything, so to speak but subject to the chief's approval, of course.

Anyway, I was quite troubled when I found out that quite a few Filipino words that were not that deep, really, and was quite well used during my childhood were now virtually unheard of and unknown to most of my pupils.

I was discussing Filipino sentence structure, which is reverse to that of English sentence pattern because in Filipino the predicate comes first before the subject... well...this is grammar stuff which I hate. 


I was discussing sentence pattern and the sample sentences used words like "aso" (thick smoke), "dukwang" (to reach and grope), "parang" (plains), etc. I saw puzzled looks from my pupils and they started raising their hands asking for the meaning of these words.I scratched my head and told them, irritably may I say, that these words were plain, simple and not-that-literary words that Filipinos use daily. But they gave me the look.

With little reflection, I realized that these words are not that popular anymore because nobody uses wood fueled stove anymore; there are no more plains, and there are no big tables filled with food to make dukwang  with. I had to illustrate "dukwang" by telling them news stories of how celphone thieves steal items from display counters.

Anyway...

TV Controls

 I was having fun with my camera when a kid form our church borrowed and tried to look at the pictures by touching the screen; he thought that my camera was a touch screen camera but it was not. Anyway, got me thinking and got me nostalgic about controls especially TV control which I think was the paradigms for designing control interface for devices...or whatever.

I spent my childhood with dial controls. We used to have a vacuum tube cabinet type Zenith television and all the controls used dials.  To change channels, a dial was turned.  The on/off control was also dial, and so was the vertical and horizontal controls; everything was controlled by turning knobs and switches.

Not our TV. I remember the horizontal and the vertical and horizontal control was located at the back panel.  In retrospect, the sound these old tvs made when turned on and turned off was horrifying by today's standards.Also, the static created by the crt was so powerful that they could literally make the viewers, when near enough, hair stand on its end.

When I was small, I used tot think that any house that had a telephone was owned by a very rich resident.  I think I may have used this kind of telephone maybe three to four times because it was a sort of a technological novelty especially for a child like me.

Then after a few years, the push buttons came. Everything then was push button. In fact, when our neighbor’s new TV arrived, we were there to witness how this push button control thing worked. It was quite a change because the TV controls had no dials. There were buttons for each channel, which during those years, numbered around four or five TV stations. Also the antenna was indoor and that meant no climbing up on the roof to rotate the aerial to look for better reception. 

No dials, just buttons. A church member had one of this. We used to watch betamax tapes on this TV. No more fine tuning dials...

Of course the next stage was the remote control. ( Then there was the rotary something called the click-wheel made famous by the  Apple IPods for the personal devices.) 

And then it was the touch screen but now some TV are responding to gestures...

I mean, even Spock didn't anticipate this. Hmmm...what's next?

MP lost

Going home from the church, I passed by an elementary school where Manny Pacquiao's fight with Bradley was being telecast live via satellite, I knew that something was not right because the people leaving the school was somber; the aura was funeral. 

There was no jubilation and excited description of the highlights of the fights instead what I heard were shouts and mumblings of accusations of being cheated: Pacquiao was mafiad by the Ameican mafia. He was karmaed because of his anti gay views (which MP vehemently denied). The fight was rigged for him to lose so that there would be rematch hence more revenue. He lost because he held Bible as if the Bible brings bad luck, etc. and so on.

Whatever the reasons, our champion lost and  MP was humble enough to admit defeat. He was magnanimous in defeat and that's what makes him more of a champion. Anyway, I think he needed the lost because he has taken his sport too lightly lately. Even though he may have won technically, the judges may have been expecting more hence they gave Bradley a handicap or something (just a theory).

Anyway,  the streets were quiet. There was no jubilation and though there were those who kept on mumbling theories about the lost, the people had that bleak look, lost look that made me think how pathetic it was for a human being to be emotionally involved over something as senseless as boxing.

I mean...  

The Chinese have occupied Bajo Masinloc and  our country's sovereignty was threatened yet the Filipinos was stoical about the issue, but when MP lost to an American it looked like as if my countrymen were ready to declare war on the United States...I mean...you gotta be kidding me.

Expect another analysis overdose.

Hmmmm...I did not watch  the replay. Somehow, I hate to admit it, me, too, was affected by the lost.

First Day of School/Smiley thing

Woke at 5:00 in the morning. Banged on the wall to wake my daughter up. Heat water and did a cup of coffee. Got dressed and then brought my daughter to her school and then went on to work. This is my first day of school, and this will be  the pattern for the next 200+ school days.

The Department of Education launched its new gimmick: the "your smile is your uniform" thing which aims to promote smiling among the teachers. According to the Department's think tank, smiling teachers promotes better learning among the pupils since it relaxes them; it lessens the tension in the classroom.  

So, each teacher is now wearing a smiley pin on their uniform. I kinda like the idea, but I don't know if it would work. Personally, I rather would not smile in class.

It would really be nice for a teacher to walk in a classroom smiling and exuding that aura of positivity and fun while the pupils are all smiling back, being respectful and exuding that aura of angelic benevolence, etc. But that's not the reality.

I have tried smiling on my first teaching days in public schools. I tried singing Sunday School songs and promoting peace and love and God's grace to my pupils, but the pupils just made fun of me and made my life miserable. 

The teachers, their smiles, their religious benevolence and what have you and all the psychological theories and understandings and all that stuff, unfortunately cannot undo, or cannot even alleviate the dysfunctional environment from which some pupils grew up with. I mean this is kinda bleak, but one has got to be in the classroom firsthand to know what I'm talking about.

But of course, there are pupils who respond to smiles very well. But...anyway, it's a progressive thing: I'd rather keep a poker face which may or may not develop into a smile rather than keeping a smile, a mad dog smile that bites or something. 

I would rather keep a blank expression on my face because pupils especially among the lower sections would consider a smile as a sign of kindness which, to them, means that they can "bully" the teacher. Anyway, I have always been a smiling teacher...well, maybe it's a good idea after all. We'll see.

Am I making any sense?

Jessica/Manny Pacquiao Overdose

Okay...I do not hate Jessica Sanchez. I have nothing against her. She's a very talented Mexican-Filipino-American. I don't know which part of her the singing talent could be attributed to but heck I don't care about the Filipino's propensity to take credit...you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the American Idol contest has been over and done with for almost a month, but still I am hearing and seeing video clips of Jessica singing that Whitney Houston (no disrespect to WH) over and over again on Philippine television (just  few seconds ago, I heard it again). Heck, can't we move on people!  I am beginning to develop Jessica overdose syndrome: itching ears, raised blood pressure and what have you.

Not another video clip...please!

Another human being that keep popping up on the news daily is Manny Pacquiao.I see him jogging, singing, Bible Quoting (good development), dancing and being nice to his opponent. It is a relief that he is not shown singing that ghastly over emotional blah, blah, blah Dan Hill song "Sometimes when we Touch" thing, but still seeing him covered by media minute by minute is hmmm...troubling.  Now, Jinky is also there.

Anyway, I think Manny is now good because I don't see Gov. Singson in his entourage. I think his new found faith in God exorcised the guy off the group.

No, I 'm not angry or anything, just sour about...hmmm...nahhh. Come to think about... it's numbing.