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.