Graduation, sorry no more traditional brass band, and other stuffs...

There'll be no brass band in this year's graduation ceremonies.For the last seven years I have been with the school, and the decades before that, the school has employed the community band to play and provide  accompaniment to the marches. I guess this tradition  showcased the musical talents of the Taytayenos especially those of Maestro Serving De Leon who wrote and composed the school hymn and Mabuhay ang Taytay and Maestro Fred Villanueva who composed the Mabuhay Rizal, both were Taytayenos and according to TES former music teacher were disciples of Maestro Lucio San Pedro. It's not just tradition, it's  about culture.

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The school year will end in two weeks. I am excited about the summer vacation for the much needed break from the daily grind of teaching, paper works, and keeping the classroom in order. I think most teachers will agree with me when I say that the most stressful part of teaching is classroom management.

The classroom is composed of around fifty pupils from different backgrounds and keeping this menagerie of children in order requires so much energy and most of that energy is channeled in keeping the teachers' temper in control. So, don't judge a teacher when he or she is caught slapping a learner. I am not defending the act, but there are times when the teacher have had so much and temper flare up.

We are now in preparing for the graduation ceremonies. I could feel my pupils' excitement but at the same time I could also sense separation anxieties especially among the girls who it seems to be more affected by the impending dissolution of the class. They have been promising never ending friendship and even making pacts that they'll stick together into high school and so on.

I was telling my pupils that in a few months in high school they'll overcome this sense of loss and move on. They'll create new friends and get into deeper relationships and that the classmates they teased during their elem could grow up to be beautiful ladies and the bullies could end up wooing them and vice versa. I told stories from my experiences but I was booed and told that such things would never happen.

Though this is my seventh year in teaching and have had hundreds of pupils passed through my classes, I still feel a sense of sentimentalism, call it that, every time a class graduates. Every class is unique, they develop a corporate identity. I would not say that the last one is better than the others who have moved on, each is different, each has its own identity. I remember last year's class was composed of active pupils who participated in almost every school activities from cooking to singing and dancing and they have won many certificates while last last year's class was made up of athletes, while the current graduating class seemed to be timid and like to keep to themselves.

Like what happen every year, I told my pupils that in a few weeks. I may not be able to remember their names, and in a few months I may not even remember their faces and though we feel so close today, even familial, this will change and there'l come a time that they would even avoid their elementary teachers. 

Life goes on.