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.

Bouree 1 from Cello Suite

An attempt!

Merry Christmas

I can’t remember my age when I received the most unforgettable Christmas gift from my father. It was a gift wrapped box (I can’t tell what’s inside) and my father told me not to open it until the Noche Buena time. The box was on the table, and I kept looking at it. I shook it, I peeked at it until at last I can’t take it anymore; I unwrapped it.

It was a string powered (pull the string to make it fly) helicopter. I was ecstatic. I didn’t know how to fly it but just holding the helicopter made me very happy. When my father arrived, he found out what I did, and he became angry. Not really angry but disappointed, but he looked angry to me.

But he took me by the hand and we went to the vacant lot across our house, and there he flew the helicopter. My brother was there and they each took turn flying the toy helicopter while I was breathless chasing it, picking it up, giving it back to them, and then joyfully watched while they flew the toy helicopter over and over again...I can’t tell how many hours or minutes my father and brother flew the helicopter but it seemed long enough to make a lasting impression on me.

It was the most expensive gift I received from my father because it was the gift that captured my imagination. Of course the toy was cheap, and my father had bought more expensive Christmas gifts like shoes, shirts, pants etc. But as a child, the value of a gift is not measured in money; it is measured in the joy that it could bring. My father could have given a branded shirts or pants, and I wouldn’t have cared about it because I didn’t care about my looks then. But that helicopter made me think of flight and that’s something money can’t buy, gifts that made me imagine things, made me think of things beyond my understanding then.

I was saddened when I found the toy chopper inside our chicken coop broken. It was really my brother who enjoyed it, but I did not complained….hmmm, maybe I whined.
Christmas has different meanings especially in today’s materialistic world, but for children the best gift is still the gift of time, of simply sharing the warmth and happiness of family and of the season. It is not expensive yet it lasts a long, long time.


Merry Christmas!

Chronicler Regional Presscon 2007

Regional Presscon

Our campus joined this year’s regional tertiary press conference held at Angel Hills, Tagaytay City on December 9-11. Although I didn’t qualify for the Luzonwide (I didn’t even make it to the top ten lists!), our paper garnered four citations in page lay out design, news page, feature and literary sections.

Rommel, our artist and Kathrina, our Editor in chief, news writer and editorial writer in Filipino, will be part of the representatives of region 4A in the Luzonwide tertiary press conference to be held in February next year at Tugegarao, Cagayan.

What can I say but, what a dismal performance from the oldest writer of the group. Waaahhhhhh!!!!

The Lord had need of me

As the transcontinental train zipped past the scenery, an elderly bishop was telling a young parson fresh out of divinity school the story of his eventful life. He then turned to the young cleric and asked him to tell the story of his vocation.

“Oh, that’s very simply told,” he smugly replied. “All I can say is that the Lord had need of me.”

“That’s a remarkable coincidence, young man,” observed the bishop. “So far as I can remember, only once in the gospel did the Lord ever say that He had need of anything. In Luke 19:34 on the occasion of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He said he had need of an ass.”

So true...of course it apllies to rear ends in the church too

City Blues

It’s been a long time since I have been out of our small town. That’s because I hate traveling to the city. The smog is oppressing, the sight depressing and the noise is deafening. So, when I was asked to deliver something to the city, I was not surprised to find out that there’s another supermall being built. On board the jeepney, as I was looking at the scaffoldings and the workmen busy with their work, I remembered what a friend said to me, “One of the requirements for a municipality to be upgraded to a city is a supermall.”

It has been observed by many that it is ironic that as the standard of living in the Philippines deteriorates, the more supermalls are being built. As the buying power of the ordinary Filipinos drop, the more stalls are being erected.

As I was observing the construction, I can only shake my head because it seems to me that supermalls are really churches promoting the religion of materialism.

Maybe it’s because I am poor, and that looking at goods, gadgets being sold in the stores arouses that primal…hmmm…what do I call this? This primal desire or drive to have, to show off, and this depressed me because I know it is wrong especially if I don’t have the money and most especially if the money I am spending (Oh how wish that this is the case) did not come from my own labor. How easy to spend money that is not yours.

Maybe it’s the gloom of Christmas…How I wish I am a child again.

My Classmates cheerleading to Vivaldi

Actualy they are dancing to the laest dance craze but I hate that kind of music. Maybe it's becuase I'm old, so I put in Vivaldi's concerto in C major.