What's going on?

What the frog? That’s the first words that came into my mind when the principal told me that I would be pulled out from my advisory class. It’s not that I like being an adviser in fact I hate the administrative and the stress that came with it,and I was already used to being a floating teacher (or what other principals called special assignment) for almost most of my public school teaching (not really career) job. 

When I was given the advisory class, due to lack of teacher, I guess, I was hesitant to accept the task because I have forgotten most of the administrative works it involved. But just like anybody else who was below the food chain, I had no right to complain and to bargain. I had to obey what had been assigned to me and let the irritation simmer down and then vent it (like in a blog) and let all the negativity die naturally.

What’s my disappointment? I was disappointed because even though the class formerly assigned to me was the last section ( in public schools the last section is usually referred to as the problem section), I have become attached to them: relationship was developed.

This is the difficult part of teaching for me because despite my strict looking façade, I’m really a softie inside and I get easily attached to people especially children (not, I'm not a pedophile or something). I suppose I have to learn how to deal with this by detaching myself from my pupils, but this is almost impossible especially if you’re dealing with pupils who are hard up both financially and emotionally. I mean some of them are already calling me tatay. 

 .

Anyway, life is a bitch and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Think Tree: Working with a bignay-pugo material

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This is a bignay pugo (Antidesma bugnius), the new bonsai material I recently acquired. Bignay is a fruit bearing tree native to the Philippines and is a popular material for bonsai enthusiast. It is also known as bugnay in Ilocos and isip-isip in Pampanga. It is a robust, easy to grow tree.  

I am deciding which is the viewing point among the four photos and judging from the photographs, it is obvious that the four-trunked-clump style will not work because the trunks are too close to each other and are blocking each others view. I am thinking of cutting the other three smaller trunks leaving the main trunk. The strong point of the tree will be nebari or the root which will need more development that I would then expose, the uro (the big hole near the base) and later the development of the main branches and secondary branches that will result to a classic broom style bonsai.

Below I removed the other trunk to see if it would look better. 

This is better. Of course, bonsai is all about patience. I'll let it sit for a while and think about my plan for a time because once the other trunks are removed, it will take a long long time to grow them back. 

Pork Barrel, Napoles, blah, blah...

I was watching the news, and I was surprised that Mrs. Napoles surrendered to the government. What she did was anti-climactic to the opera unfolding before the country. She did not even try to elude the NBI and Police tracker teams the way Ping Lacson did when the warrant for Ping’s arrest was released by the court for his alleged involvement in the Kuratong case (Well, Ping was never caught; the government got tired), nor did she even try to do a Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wearing braces and other ortho-medical stuff (that made her look like Naruto or something) to elicit sympathies from the people…I mean, the surrender was plain anti-climactic.

She's complaining of head ache, high blood pressure, diabetes. That's what you get for having too much pork. If I'm in her position right now, I'd claim I have HIV-AIDS, Ebola Virus, Dengue, Malaria...just look at her, she's as healthy as a pork.

Her surrender to the president was understandable since she feared for her life. With her knowledge, she could destroy the careers of many politicians in both the houses of congress, officers in the executive department, local government executives, and the active and retied officers in the military. These people would do anything to keep their hold on power and their hands on their pork barrels and eliminating a fixer like Napoles is a cinch to them. With the width and depth of her web of corruption in the government, she knew she could not trust just anyone and surrender to the NBI or the Police would be a suicide. I mean either she could be ambushed, or she could be shot in the forehead for stealing a police escort’s gun. What are the chances.

Napoles’s web of corruption even extended to the Most Holy Catholic Church when it was found out that she had priests on her payroll. These priests even executed affidavits exculpating Napoles and her brother of charges of illegal detention. The priests added religious voodooism by saying that Benhur Luy (the whistle blower) was on a spiritual retreat.  I am sure these priests knew by head and by heart the Ten Commandments. Of course, everything can be bought now, even priests, may I say.

  Obviously, the monsignor had knowingly or unknowingly eaten unclean pork.

I am, with most of my countrymen and women, don’t like the special treatment being given to Mrs. Napoles. I understand her surrender to the president. The president is the only person who could protect her now and by accommodating Napoles, the president did well. What I could not understand is why she is not in behind bars now; she is in jail but in an air-conditioned office! If it’s about security, the president could appropriate the army special forces, the marines, the scout rangers, the Navy frogmen and even some of his presidential security guard to ensure her safety in jail as long as she stays in a cell like the maid she put to jail for qualified theft. I mean, aside for the technicalities of the law, it is pretty obvious that Napoles is guilty of plunder and perjury which one or both should land her to jail.

It’s an epiphany that she was detained in the jail where the maid she charged with qualified theft was also incarcerated. Of course, I heard she will be moved to first class accommodation either in Camp Bagong Diwa or in Crame. No special treatment here...well, shit happens.

  

Divine Intervention: A Book Review (sort of)

This is an interesting sci-fi novel that fringes on theology.  I was hooked on it.

Here's my synopsis:

Spaceship Walt Disney was sent out to space to find habitable planets for earth to colonize. They found a planet from a galaxy thousand of light years away from earth. They landed on the planet, called it Mandala, and established a colony that for 150 years being cut off from earth, evolved into a unique civilization. The most remarkable thing about them is that they developed a religion based on the journal of the Walt Disney's captain.

A communication was sent to earth a bout the success of the mission. Earth sent spaceship Mayflower containing the second batch of colonizers numbering 33, 000 cryogenetically suspended terrans. As they enter Mandala's orbit, the prime minister of Mandala saw the arrival of Mayflower as a threat to his government since the new colonizer would outnumber the original citizens. To stop this threat, the prime minister hatched a plan to crash the Mayflower.

There was a problem, Drew a deaf and mute boy who wears a digital communicator established contact with God while praying. God informed him that the "Earthies" had arrived. Drew unintentionally informed the prime minister of this knowledge, and the prime minister had no choice but to detain Drew in case the information leaked to the public which could complicate his plan.

Drew escaped and there ensued a battle between the city dwelling and the tribal, rastafarian Mandalans called the "Burnouts" that lived on the fringes of the city. The battle escalated into space when the Burnouts launched a primitive rocket, designed to intercept the Mayflower, which they also saw as a threat, with the intent of hi-jacking it so that they could use it to search for a planet of their own. The Burnouts was able to defeat the city dwellers because of the information that God had provided Drew on the location of the enemies position.

In outer space, Drew's father, a preacher and a minister, found out that the God which Drew was praying to was an old space probe launched by Walt Disney on Hades, one of the planets of the Mandalan system nearest to its sun. The probe landed on the planet which was pure silicon. When it landed, being an impurity to the silicon surface of the planet, it accidentally created circuits that after a one hundred fifty years became a silicon based sentient being that called itself God, a term it learned from drew's prayer.

The probe was shut down by the city dwellers space plane but before it was destroyed, it was able to link with the Mayflower transferring its consciousness into the ship and from then on called itself "Ship". The Prime Ministers plot was stopped and the truth was exposed.

Epilogue: The ship asked for the "Mayflower" so that it could also explore space on its own.

The idea of a probe acquiring sentience and evolving is not new. I have read and seen the original "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and it was here that I first encounter the idea of a space probe acquiring sentience when it interacted with something out there in outer space. In Star Trek, the protagonist was called VGER which turned out to be the evolved Voyager 6, the space probe launched during the 20th to explore the galaxies. Its primary program was to learn what is learnable. VGER threatened to destroy Earth but the crew of the USS Enterprise was able to reason with it because no weapons, Klingons or Federation, could stop VGER.

Anyway, back to Divine Intervention, the story was good. I was hooked on the plot. The science is not that difficult to understand (which, really in reading sci-fi, one doesn't really have to validate or verify).

What I was really impressed was how the story was able to connect religion and science.

Here's an excerpt from the Captain's Journal which the Mandalans referred to as simply the "Journal":

The truth is so simple, and yet i tremble as I put into words. On cosmological scale, the universe is symmetric in time. What we know of as God is simply the collective consciousness travelling opposite to our temporal orientation. God's realm is the unknowable future; everything that is real to him  remains only a possibility to us. Ironically, the reverse is true: The reality of our past remains unknown to God. And I see what the future holds for humanity. As our technology continues to advance we will eventually become godlike ourselves. Sooner or later our descendants will find a way to transfer themselves into immortal beings, perhaps in the form of pure energy, and they will survive the transition into the collapses of the universe. And then--the beautiful symmetry!--humanity will be the God, and today's God will be some alternate version of humanity, evolving backward in our temporal frame. I have no doubt that when we are God, we will guide them just as he is guiding us now.

Now, I gotta quit for this is way above and I need time to process this :-)

Rheumatism and the toilet seat

I was not able to go to church because my ankle was swollen, again. I have eaten too much peanuts while watching TV and add to that the mongo ( last friday's viand), and the togue okoys and other uric acid rich foods that all seemed harmless eaten at a small amount but all together added up, compounded to cause this swollen, throbbing ankle that was so painful to even move that I think I would pee just lifting it off the bed.

Photo not mine

I didn't sleep well last night. To relieve my pain, my wife and I bought liniment to at least topically ease the pain, but the stuff worked for a short time until it evaporated and the cold negated its heating effect. I was twisting turning on the bed but I had to do that without lifting my swollen ankle. Moving my affected leg was so painful that I had to use my arms to lift it so that I could change position while sleeping. It was so difficult that I (always) promised to watch my diet, but that's a promise that time and time again I fail to keep because every time I feel well again, I forget the pain and just eat food that I like or that caught my fancy especially street food.

Sunrise, I went to the toilet for my regular vowel movement. After I was done, I raised my butt to wash, (well, we Filipinos, majority that is, do not use toilet paper' we wash our butts with our left hands using water and soap) but just raising my butt was so painful that I had to sit down again. Our toilet was not equipped with railings the ones you find in a PWD (People with Disability) toilet that I was grimacing and cursing (por dos por kwatro...por pabor senor...) just lifting a few centimeters off so that I could insert my hand between the toilet seat and my butt. The experience was so painful that I had to slumped back down to the bowl after washing.

Photo definitely not me

Sitting down on the toilet seat was easy; it was the standing up that I was worried about. With no railings to hold on to, I had to put my hands on the rim of the toilet seat, painfully position my affected foot adjacent to my butt to establish the center of gravity, clenched my teeth, and then slowly lift my butt up and painfully rose up with all the courage and the decency not to shout and woke the whole neighborhood up. Add to that the fact that our toilet was manually flushed. Torture...it was torture.

Anyway, my wife was so moved by my condition that she woke up early and ran to the nearest drugstore to buy me planax. God bless her. Anyway, I think I should blame our grade leader because she told me that I needed to submit the grades for my pupils and the stress of just thinking about all that numbers...Naaahhh, its my diet.


Hmmm...maybe I will take a bath because my butt feels sticky.

Election Trash

I was walking back home when someone reached out to me and gave me campaign leaflets. The man was wearing a vest printed with the picture and the name of the candidate he was campaigning for. He was not alone, he and his cohorts were spaced evenly on the street handing out propaganda.

I looked at the man shook my head and didn't smile back. No, I was not being mean; I was just thinking. A simple calculation of the amount of paper they were holding told that it may have cost a forest, or if they were using recycled paper, the amount of carbon and toxins and energy wasted to recycle the papers.

There must be better ways of campaigning. I have always advocated the use of an environment friendly, energy efficient and healthful means of campaigning. 

Again I am just sharing an idea:

Employ the chismoso and the chismosa.

      Now, this is an idea that cold save candidates millions of pesos. Vehicles with PA system blaring off campaign jingles and propaganda is the traditional and still the most used method of campaigning in the local election. Though this loud, it's not as effective as the chismoso and the chismosas (or it's generic: chismakers). Aside from irritating the voters, it uses fuel, electricity and emits carbon monoxide, and no one really stops to listen to the unintelligible garbles coming from these vehicles.

Photo not mine.

      Chismakers are different. They have many advantages over the traditional methods: they are infectious and voracious. Their operation is house to house and they, like preachers of the past, could assemble pockets of people to listen to their mongering. They are effective carriers of false information that could diminished or even destroy an opposing candidates person.  Anyway...

          I want to see candidates sweeping the streets, cleaning the sewage or unclogging the drainage. For me this is the most effective way of manipulating the people's sympathy. 

          Hmmmm.....

Jesus and Judas

 

      "I'm sorry, Judas my brother," Jesus said,"But it is necessary."

     "I've asked you before, rabbi--is there no other way?"

      "No, Judas, my brother. I too should have liked one. I too hoped and waited for one until now--but in vain. No, there is no other way.The end of the world is here.This world,this kingdom of the devil, will be destroyed and the kingdom of heaven will come. I shall bring it. How? By dying. There is no other way. Do not quiver, Judas, my brother. In three days I shall rise again."
   
       'You tell me this in order to comfort me and make me able to betray you without rending my own heart. You say that I have the endurance--you say it in order to give me strength.No, the closer we come to that terrible moment...no, rabbi, I won't be able to endure it!"

        'You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary--it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me.We two must save the world. Help me.'

        Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"

        Jesus reflected for a long time.Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to.That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified."


--Nikos Kazantzaki, The last temptation.

NAT Review

I was asked to be one of the reviewers of English VI for the National Achievement Test which will be held in the third week of March. I am not complaining but I teach Music  at school, but  I did study teaching English in college as a major (or concentration), obvious from my bad writing.

Now listen to this (or read this): one of the English teachers is a math major; hence, she was asked to be one of the reviewers for math. Now, this is bit confusing but it just goes to show how our former school head ran the school: teachers with math major teaches English while teachers with English major teaches music etc.  Well, if you ask me, I admit that I cannot fathom the wisdom behind this arrangement, but I am just a lowly teacher without any right to question things. Of course, her understanding was that as elementary teachers we were supposed to be generalist which is true, but her thinking is now outdated because even elementary teachers are now specializing (or concentrating).

School heads see things differently from the teachers' viewpoint. They decide things based on what they think is best for the school and sometimes they have to make do with people that are available to them and sometimes that mean assigning people which they think is best for the assignment.

Anyway, reviewing for he NAT is one heck of a boring task. There’s a system we follow:

• .       Pre-test. Pupils are given mock tests. While the test items are being checked, the reviewers monitor the skills that the pupils did poorly with e.g. subject-verb agreement and other grammar stuff, comprehension skills like cause and effect, getting the main idea, etc. After checking and the reviewing the skills, the frequencies of errors are recorded for comparison for the post test.

•     Post-test. Again the same tests are given to the pupils. The test is checked and the frequencies of errors recorded for comparison with the pre-test. The reviewer then checks if there’s a significant change in the frequencies of errors. Attention is paid to skills that the pupils did poorly in the pre-test. Then there’s the final stage:

•     Mastery Test. The same test is given with the aim of reinforcing skills. It is expected that the reviewers will re-teach some of the skills that the pupils did very poorly with and if necessary, remediation classes is to be conducted.

This system is new and was brought in by the new principal and according to him this is the secret why their district remains within the top 5 best performing district in the division. Compared to last year’s system, this is much better. Last year, we were so exhausted from too much activity: Junior JS Prom, Field Day, NAT, etc., plus threats that anytime a supervisor would come to observe on us, I mean, we could hardly let our hair down!

Teachers are thinkers and not manual laborers; they do best when their mind is relaxed.

Two weeks and it already feels like...

Already two weeks old into 2013 and it already feels like the middle of the year, as if the Christmas break never happened at all. 

After the third quarter examinations on Thursday and Friday, things will suddenly shift into higher gear for the grade six department. The teachers will be very busy preparing the pupils for the grade six National Achievement Test or NAT which is the barometer of performance of schools. Unlike before, there were the Regional Achievement Test (RAT, a big rodent) and the Division Achievement Test (or the DAT, as in Dat Big Joke!) were grade six teachers and pupils used to prepare for this three test as a supposedly mock test for the NAT. The tests were also ways for the regional and the division office to rank the performance of their underlings.  When it comes to rankings...let's just say that rankings and the thought of ranking make people rankable for the looney bin.

Thanks to the Ph.Ds and Ed.Ds of the department for stopping these superfluous tests because they did not achieve anything, and most of the times the test items were recycled or copy pasted letter for letter including typos from the previous years'. I mean...with pupils preparing for three major evaluation and assessments a year, and administrators trying to outrank each other in performance at each level, the pupils were trained (not educated) towards achieving good test results which means more rote memorization and mock tests and mock tests and reviews and reviews and mock tests blah, blah, blah...no sane mind would learn anything from it. Sure their head would be filled with facts and figures but then, once regurgitated, nothing is digested.

Aside form the NAT, we will also be busy preparing for the field day ( which I hope will not push through) and the graduation.

I know, I know this post is too negative, but you know how it is, if I do not take these things out in writing, chances are, I'l be taking them out on people and that means being one mean son of a female dog :-)

First day of the year, RH Bill, Crhistmas Raffles, Blah, blah, blah

After the two weeks Christmas vacation, I reported to the school to find, as usual, a fraction of the pupils present. This has been the pattern, according to the veteran teachers, whenever the first school day of the new year is in the middle of the week. The attendance picks up on the first Monday after the Christmas vacation.

Well, for us teachers, we can’t do anything about it but to use the unofficial suspension of classes for doing administrative works like making test materials for the end of the third quarter grading period or, for those who have advisories, updating their records etc.

I was thinking of writing my reflections about the 2012 but I couldn’t recall anything spectacular that happened to me. I did not even win a set of dining plate on our Christmas party raffle, which kind of made me realize that I was not really a lucky person. One of my co-grade-six teacher’s names has been consistently called for four years, this she told me while we were setting up the LCD Projector for the recognition of the retirees. There she sat patiently smiling as if expecting her name would be pulled out of the box. After a few minutes, there she was climbing the stage claiming her prize and when she came down she passed by me and told me that she would be going out of the gym since her name was already called. I was envious but happy for her. I told her, “That’s your reward for being a good girl.” Anyway, went home tired but I really enjoyed the presentations and, of course, the food.

 I did not even win a tumbler in the raffles.

Maybe the highlight of the year was when I started doing bonsai. I had talks with Mr. Bernardo, our school’s veteran agriculture teacher, about bonsai and my interest was kindled about the art. I then researched about it. One my friends, who have one Fukien tea tree bonsai, lent me his bonsai book. I started looking for materials and I started my own little collection of bonsais.

Enough about the damned bonsais.

Hmmm…hmmmmm…

We have a new boss. Our former principal was kicked up, promoted to district supervisor three months before her retirement which according to DepEd policy, she will never enjoy the retirement benefits of the supervisor since she didn’t meet the three year period requirement.

From a lady principal to a gentleman principal and the transition is still going on (the painting of the office) and I expect that there will be movement in the teaching assignments by the beginning of the new school year. But as usual, as the veteran teachers always tell us, “Don’t worry, principals come and go every three years but we will be working together as co-teachers till the day we retire.”

Ohhhh…I almost forgot the destruction of the school garden. To make way for the new kindergarten (damned the Germans for inventing this) classroom, the Department tore down our beautiful school garden, and in the place of greeneries and flowers, there sprouted a concrete monstrosity. I have always lamented this because human population and its projected growth is one of the constant factor in decision making and the government people should have considered allotting large tracts of lands for basic education schools to met population growth.   In the near future, I imagine schools would be like high rise condominiums without any arable lots for planting or for agriculture and how in the heck can we teach our pupils about the importance of the conservation of our environment and the balance between nature and development if all they see is concrete and steel.

Goodbye garden.

RH Bill. I saw the debates about RH bill and how Sen Tito Sotto fought every provisions and letters of the bill. I saw how he kept inserting the term abortifacent (something he sottoed, I think) to every nook and cranny of the letter of the bill. I mean was that necessary? I mean I’m no lawyer but it was clear from the start that the bill was not about abortion. Well, anyway, the bill was passed and was signed by the president and is now a law. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church will not give in without a fight. I do believe that there are priests and nuns and popes and cardinals who agrees with RH bill but they couldn't express it because they were bound by the Church dogma. Well, what the heck. Happy New Year.