Afternoon Classes/ SF stories

Dep Ed Divison of Rizal held a clinic for its student journalists for the upcoming regional schools press conference. It was a two day affair from Friday September 28 to Saturday the 29th. An emergency class was declared by the school head which meant there was no morning classes for us. 

My classroom was reserved to be used by the guests fortunately it was not, it was used on Saturday. I was waiting the whole morning and to pass the time I opened the e-book files on my cellphone and read classic SF short.

The first one I read was "The Shroud." It was a short story about the shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin was believed by many to contain the body of Jesus Christ, and although skeptics have challenged it's authenticity, many still held on to the belief that it was the proof that Christian savior existed.

In the story, the shroud was accepted as true and that the cadaver wrapped in the cloth was undeniably Jesus. A Eucharistic or nondenominational order was established to keep the shroud and to make sure it was open for all and not owned or kept by one of the many Christian denominations.

One scientist was allowed to study the DNA in the shroud and he found out, thru the analysis of the chromosomes, that the crucified subject suffered from a disease that shrinks the brain which results to delusions.

Of course the mad messiah was one of the theories used by theologians to explain Jesus and his messianic claim. Even the Romans said that to the man claiming to be the son of God. There's nothing new about it but the impact of such discovery to Christianity is unimaginable, or maybe not. I mean no one can dislodge a fanatical believer from his faith.  

I was smiling when I finished reading A.C. Clarke"s "Stroke of the Sun". I mean, watching a football and you noticed the opposing team's fan were all holding a foil like tabloid sized souvenir given by politicians. When the team was cheated by the referee and the team's fanatics, together with the planted people who knew the purpose of the souvenir focused them on the referee, it obliterated the referee, burning the poor guy to ashes.

Although these classic sci-fi were dated ( Asimov's computer was called Multivac becuase vacuum tube were the tech used in computers in the 50's and 60's) the story especially the twist was entertaining. 

Of course the science is not important, the story was and its what I like about the classics, it is not overburdened by technicalities and the need to get scientific but the idea was there.

I was so entertained that I didn't noticed that I had read twelve of short stories.

Living Space-Isaac Asimov

Silly Asses-Asimov 

The Jokester-Asimov

The Parasite-Arthur C. Clarke

Second Dawn-Clarke

The Stroke of the Sun-Clarke

A Walk in the dark-Clarke

The Nine Billion Names of God-Clarke

Green Hills of Earth-Robert Heinlein

From Sci-Arizona (www.scifi-az.com) 

Dream world

Duty-Honor-Planet

The Shroud

 I do miss the time when I could read an entire novel in one sitting. 

Water Bottles and trash

The classroom is a factory of trash. I am amazed at the amount of plastic wrappers, scratch papers etc, that my class produce. I have 45 pupils which goes to class bringing only their bags yet when it was time to go home the trash they have accumulated could fill two 20-gallon trash bins. 

I am sure this problem is not limited to my classroom, in fact this is a planet wide problem and the ecological disasters brought about by plastic is too widespread and well known that it needs no explaining.

The school participated in the eco-brick project. I don't know who sponsored this activity, the municipal government or the department, but it was an outstanding idea started by environmentalist, upcycling, a fancy word for recycling. 

 I was not that enthusiastic about it because, yeah, call me the skeptic.

Anyway, I asked my pupils to bring plastic bottles. Many brought 5-10 liters gallon which was too big for the project intended for the eco-bricks in the school. So, I was stuck with lots of them. I brought home some for my urban gardening project which I hope I get to accomplish this sembreak.

I used one of them and I found out that one 5 liter water bottle could contain an entire week's trash. But I had to make some modifications. I attached a funnel, made from the cut out upper part of the bottle, and inserted it into the mouth of the bottle. This made it easier for the pupil's to insert plastic wrappers.

The funnel was so useful that even dust and other trash too small be picked up only by the dust pan could be put inside the bottle.

I cut a 1/2 pvc pipe as a trash compactor.

This is one weeks trash compacted into a five liter bottle.

Wjhat is the use of these 5-gallon eco-bricks?

Throw them at misbehaving pupils.

I plan to make plant stand for my bonsai and I'm going to use them as filler.

I agree with Tito Sotto! Changing names etc.

Photo not mine: CTTO

I agree with Sen. Tito Sotto. Our national anthem is up for an update. It's a million years old and the lyrics especially the last line speaks of a romantic era where dying in a revolution against the colonial oppressors is the ultimate sacrifice patriots could do for their country. Would you die for your country? Me?  Hell, no! It's not fun.

Filipino politicians have the propensity to change things especially ones they can legislate easily. They love changing the names of streets, avenues, buildings, towns, provinces after names of their long departed relatives or political allies. I guess it's all about name recall, or vicarious immortality where they want their heritage, in this case surnames, perpetuated.

Take the case of the Municipality of Montalban, Rizal. My mother had an uncle who lived there and we visited the place maybe three times and the town was beautiful then, the mountains, the river where we bathe, and the myth of Bernardo Carpio were the main attraction of the place. 

Artwork not mine: CTTO

I was told that all earthquakes emanates from Montalban and that there were two giant boulders colliding with Bernardo Carpio trapped in the middle trying to prevent the rocks from crushing himself. He was cursed to do this Sisyphean task because he fell in love with the wrong lady. 

The mythical giant is still alive, according to folklore,  and the earthquakes occur every time Carpio shakes his shoulder. I guess his shoulder shakes created the west valley fault. nah, just kidding. Its the other way around. The area where Bernardo Carpio was supposed to be trapped is in the west valley fault which explains the legend of the origin of the earthquakes.

Montalban does not exist anymore, instead in its place the Municipality of Rodriguez emerged. What happens when the name of a town is changed?

A lot. The myths, the historical references, traditions,  the romance it evokes, so many things that are intertwined with the name. I guess it's like meeting a person you know as Charice introducing herself/himself as Zyrus. The person changed too.

I had the chance to visit Montalban a few years ago and I was a bit disappointed to see the hundreds of vacant/abandoned row houses project in place of the once forested feet of the mountains. 

The sad thing is, the Rodriguez Family is a virtually forgotten and they are hardly remembered in most of Rizal Province except in the isolated municipality of Rodriguez. I hope the provincial board has seen their errors and return the municipality's name to Montalban.

Politicians should be the last thing to consider when naming public places, buildings, parks etc. History, aboriginal names, folk tradition, municipal identity, fruits, animal, insects, rock formations, etc. aa lot of names that evokes natural beauty, myths and palates, to choose from. 

Politicians names should be there at the bottom of the list of names along with the obscene and the sexually explicit. In fact sewers and water treatment plants, drug rehab centers, nuclear plants, mine shafts, etc. should be named after them.,

Where was I?

 The Lyrics, nah, I was joking. The lyrics needs no changing, its the senator and the people in the government who betray the government that needs changing, in fact, all of us needs changing.

Asthmatic Thoughts

I dread the -ber months. It is the official start of the Christmas season here in the Philippines and it's also the start of the change in the climate. It's the end of the rainy season and the shift from the wet southwest monsoon wind to the cold bearing wind of the north east monsoon that wrecks havoc to my (or many asthmatics) system. I don't know the reason why and I don't want to find out becuase its beyond my control.

So I am absent from work which left me with nothing to do but decompress and allow my body to recover. I try to avoid medications as much as possible because of the side effects with which hand tremors  from the ventulins being the worst. It's disconcerting to see a part of your body out of your control. I mean, I imagine the trembling hands grabbing my neck, strangling me and gauging my eyes out.

Who wants to get sick anyway because given the choice everybody would schedule their sickness to a date where it would be convenient to everybody. Another thing is the inconvenience an absent teacher brings to the whole team. Your work load is distributed to your fellow teachers free time.  We deal with children and a lot could go wrong, accidents, fist fights and it's not unusual to report to work the next day with a parent or two waiting for you at the hallway to report an incident of bullying. 

A few years ago I had the experience of dealing with a stabbing incident. It was an accident but it was hard to make parents realize that when they saw their children bleeding in the hand. The thing with parents is that their children have already forgiven and forgotten yet they are still angry. 

Another was when a scissor was plugged into a socket which the pupil thought was not connected to the power source resulting to the black out of the classroom. It was fortunate that the switch was not connected to the entire building else I would have got the ire of many teachers. I had to buy fuses to replace the busted ones.

The teachers job is difficult. I mean aside from teaching, academic development, records management, community relations, etc. they also carry some of the burden of their pupils. They are affected by their pupils difficult conditions. Even the toughest teacher would not be affected upon seeing a pupil head down while others are eating their lunch because of lack of money, or a pupil with bruises from beating, or a bully who came from a broken family. 

What makes teaching children a more difficult job? It's when the teacher's parental instinct kicks in. 

    

All Apologies and love...

(I'm not feeling well. The sudden shift in the weather or climate, I should say, affects my body in nefarious ways: clogged upper respiratory system, headaches and, omens of, God forbids, an asthma episode.)

I arrived in the school earlier a few minutes earlier today. I took the time to read some of my pupils' letters which I have asked them to write last week. I was reading them and I have noticed that their letters have two things in common: love and apologies.

These themes are also present in their messages posted on the teacher's day message wall. What impressed me was the expressiveness, the way they write those words directly to their teachers. I wondered if they were as expressive to their parents as they were to their teachers. 

I took a few minutes to think about it and to ask why all apologies. I guess its because the children are bombarded with rules. school rules, classroom rules, etc, and to their minds any infraction of a rule is an offense to the teacher because I cannot imagine a child offending a teacher, I mean not in the way adult offends one another. 

I have a soft spot for my pupils even though I get angry at them and shout at them but at the end of the day, I cannot help but tell them I'm sorry and that my words are triggered by my high blood pressure. But words hurt even at least for me, there are times when I thought I have been too rough to a pupil that it gives me troubled sleep and I have to seek that pupil out first thing in the morning to apologize but of course children are wonderful people they forget easily. 

I think it was the philosopher Nietzsche who said that if we do not forget, we go crazy and children are good at that. I mean, its not that we beat the hell out of them, but we do use words sharply, but they move on much faster. I still get visits from former pupils who laughs at their experiences from the jokes to the shouts. Of course, I cannot say that all of them have forgiving hearts, some might have kept a grudge or more.

As I was reading the letters, I could not help but smile at the pledges of everlasting friendship. I hope that they do keep their promises. Childhood friends are the best ones for they have shared the earliest phase of their lives.

Children become adult and once they have realized how powerful these two words are: love and apology, they become selfish with them, they give them sparingly or wrongly.

  

Adult not only loses their childhood imagination, to a degree they also lose their childlike ability to empathize.

Teacher's day and the straw that broke the camels back

When the activities for this year's Teacher's Day were presented to us by our grade leader, my initial reaction was, what's going on? I thought it was a bad joke?  Well, I was hoping it was. Of course, I knew beforehand.

The idea that I would be performing "Spaghetti Pataas" remixed with anthemic 90's dance hit "Always" was blasphemous, traumatic even. Heck, I am not thinking of my personal dignity, but I am more concerned with the mental health of the audience. Anyway, I know the program meant well and one of its objectives was to showcase the teachers talent. But me dancing? Impossible....err...get me drunk first.

Speaking for my group, when each individual was asked what they wanted for Teacher's Day, the answers were as varied as the number of the members. One wanted a movie pass, another a lunch out, facial and beauty stuff, rest day, a date with a virgin err..I mean beer and gin, etc. I mean. it's our day, its like a birthday and there's the idea, no matter how illusory it was, that it was our day. But it was disconcerting when it was learned that the special day would become a fund raising day.

Personally, the idea was sacrilegious.

I think with the stress and work and the activities and programs and visitors and the children and the parents and the gamuts and gamuts of stuffs of everyday grind only to be told that a fund raising was at hand and that all teachers will perform, no exception as it was communicated to us, was the straw that broke the camel's back that prompted the teacher's club to seek a dialog with the school head. The dialog resulted to the clarifications of the misconceptions of the intentions for the occasion in the institution.  (Sapatos ni Syon) 

I am not privy to the conversation and as much as possible I try to stay away from school politics. I don't want to be a head ache to the school head and I am one of those employees who keep their head down,  report to work on time, go home on time. Invisibility is the survival mechanism I have adapted. 

But I was invited to a meeting and I have heard our school head's  side verbatim and the clarifications on class observation and her decision to stop the fund raising.  

Of course, it did not end there. the teachers consensus was to continue with the program. But I am not going to dance, I am willing to sweep the gym's floor to make up for dancing, it's very kind of our school head not to take my bet and simply smiled at me and said she will not ask me to do such thing.

It's tough to be a school head because the principal is the embodiment of the system that the teachers abhor so they are the ones who gets the flak from frustrations, stress, even the ire of the parents. Aside from the administrative jobs, they have to please the minor gods and the muses from the higher ups. I mean...they add to the stress.

I can't even put myself in their shoes because the complexity of the task add the thought of dealing with teachers who unlike pupils can fight back cowers me. The complexity of the task would kill me the first day.

Resentments build up due to stress, financial problems. personal problems, but in the end I believe that all of us are good people its just that we are all put under a lot of pressure that sometimes overwhelm us and turn us into something we don't want to be.

This event was bound to happen, its just a matter of time. It's a good thing it happened this early because the pressure has been released because below the straw that broke the camel's back are heavier and deeper stuffs that are pushing up and needs to be addressed with, and to which I say Caveat.

Reflection and refraction on yesterday's lesson

The flag ceremony was done.

ESP was over.

English time.

Sat down and thought for a while.

Checked my curriculum guide and saw that its writing time. Read the objectives in random and here are some of them in no particular order:

• Compose clear and coherent sentences using appropriate grammatical structures: -Subject-verb agreement
• Write a 4- paragraph composition showing -comparison and contrast 
• correct spelling - appropriate punctuation marks -transition/ signal words

Hmmm...I said to myself. What about these objectives? Put down the curriculum guide on the table and stared at the ceiling, nah, too fancy.

Looks at the rubrics with its categories/criteria and score. I prevented myself from throwing them out the windows because even I as a teacher, once presented with the categories and the numbers would be thinking about them rather what I want to write or say something about. To tell the truth some teachers, like me, would not even be able to meet these criteria.

So...

I stood in front of the class, asked them to get a whole sheet of paper and write a letter to their friends. 

Some pupils espoecially the girls were excited but many were hesitant and even protested loudly, much too loudl should I say, that they didn't know how to write or speak in English.

I started a monologue: "Dear children Filipinos are good with English. When an American goes to China and asks a Chinese where they could find a taxi, guess what? The common Chinese folk could not understand a single word and that foreigner would have to communicate using their hands, they have to act every word of it out. 

Here in the Philippines when an american asked anyone, even you, where to find a taxi, you can understand, you can reply in English. I mean you can say "over there, go to the left, etc." So, You are all good with English."

Ok! Start writing!

"Sir with margin?" 

"Sir can I write six letters?"

"Sir, what's the English for this or that?"

"Just write!"

"Sir, should we be writing to our friends here in the classroom or outside the classroom?"

"Write to any friend you like, in the classroom, outside  the classroom, imaginary, real, any friends..."

"Sir how many sentences?"

"What should write about?"

"Anything"

"Just write!"

After five minutes many are already passing their papers...

Write more, write the first thing that comes into your mind.

I was looking at them and was happy to see that some of them were smiling while writing (so, you are writing to your crush?), some were looking up to the ceiling conjuring up English words (me looking up at the ceiling and asking them what they see above) to translate what they wanted to say, some just gave up and started doodling on their paper after writing a few sentences.

So, finally after an hour, I told them to pass their papers.

I read their works (not checked or graded them) and was happy at the numbers of sentences  they have written, some even wrote multiple letters to many friends. I read some sample to the class, joked about who they were writing to. 

Did I grade their papers? Did I rank their outputs? Hell, no!

No, just told them it was all very good and they should enjoy writing whatever it is that comes into their heads no matter how incoherent and random the ideas.

When rules are imposed first, it distracts the writer and the creativity will be replaced by rigid conformity that would hamper their writing this early in their lives. 

Writing is learned by writing. Its similar to music, lots of people are lead to music theory because they can already sing or play music and musical terms are necessary to communicate, but very few, if any at all, were led to music by studying music theories first. So, encourage them to write, doodle first, unthinking of rules of grammar, accuracy of words, it could all start with one written word.

Interest is the best teacher.