Anáyo: 10.21

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Privileges of Learning

When I started school, teachers and textbooks were the sources of learning. At times, my parents, too, were my teachers. As a pupil, I virtually did what I was told—and as I was told. I read my books and came to know things and learned from the teacher.

In high school, I probably did the same thing because of the rules we had to follow but I enjoyed it especially how our teachers made us engage with lessons.

Within the halls of Ateneo, my senior year in high school was particularly memorable. Toward the end of the year, we were required by our English teacher to dig deep into the life of one prominent person in history from A to Z. Assigned to the letter “F”, I made a shortlist which included Michael Faraday, Robert Frost and Sigmund Freud. Eventually, I chose Freud.

Up until the 1990s, I had to browse books and scour card catalogs from the library to make that paper. These were no days of Wikipedia—my classmates and I had to source out the lives of these famous people from tomes of books in Amelita’s Verroza’s kingdom called Periodicals Section of the old high school library on the ground floor of the Burns Hall.

Some of us even had to invade Ms. Esper Poloyapoy’s and Aida Levasty’s College Circulation across the hall in the Burns Hall. There in the College Library was where I found the juicier Freud—in the definitive biography by his bosom friend, Ernest Jones. Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, Encyclopedia Americana, all encyclopedias and primary sources—these were the heyday of index cards filed in that brown box—title, author and subject cards. I did not know why but why of all these cards, it’s the subject card that looked the most beautiful of them all. And from that class, some fifty personalities were featured enough to collect in a compendium of sorts. That project I think was legendary.

Does this mean that the approach used by my high school teacher border on the reflexive? Was it evident in the way I was given a choice by my English teacher to work on something and I personally chose Sigmund Freud? Did this, too, mean I practically helped design my own learning? If it were so, then I would have more of these eventually in college when almost all projects for the courses I enrolled in allowed us to produce the output of our own preferences.

After our high school graduation, my classmates went to enroll in universities while I stayed in the same school. At the time, studying in a bigger school in Manila— the country’s capital—was a status symbol.

For any youth at the time, there was nothing cooler than that. It did not only mean pursuing courses that suited your taste; it also promised an idyllic academic environment we’d see in the university brochures. It probably also meant “more knowledge”—even as these universities would place prominently in the world rankings, and so on. So did it mean having better chances to succeed in life? Yes.

In college, meanwhile, some of my course papers and essays were more directed to answering key questions to satisfy their rubrics. But certainly, other outputs in the humanities and social sciences were born of my own insight and creativity. Were the didactic and the authentic approaches prominent in my college education? Probably.

Nevertheless, all knowledge that I could have known only lay everywhere—from the books and encyclopedias to almanacs to journals—but were they accessible to me? No. Did our school library have a big collection of these? Not really.

So this was the time when one had to go to a university to access a piece of information which was only available from the exclusive collection of this school or that university. Knowledge before the age of the internet was so precious and rare—one had to search it as if on a mission, as it were.

But when every school had interconnectivity, things changed. Schools in the regions now “mattered”. They became equally competitive—along with the leveling up of the graduate-level faculty who now came back to their departments.

I was surprised that I could now find books easier through an online public access catalog or OPAC in our school. If then, I relied too heavily on what my teachers had to say, this time, much knowledge and information were efficiently at my disposal.

Everything that I only probably wondered about because I heard them from my teachers or was sparked by their discussions I could now probably know elsewhere. I have been so enamored by so much information I can now find online. And since then, I have not stopped.

Advances in technology—the digital media and the internet—significantly leveled the playing field for universities and colleges. “Decentralization” and “regionalization” became the bywords. “Periphery” also became a relative term. Because knowledge became more accessible through the new media, the modern learner became more empowered than ever before. (The new generation really grew up being babysat not only by television but by the internet—gadgets and all.)

Years ago, I had to spend hours in the library to come up with my project, I had to compare notes with my classmates on their own and I had to see my teachers in the Faculty Room personally to submit to her the required journal, now, everything is different.

In the 21st century, my students must have a personal computer, laptop or Smartphone to connect online and attend my classes—they must log in the Classwork Attendance I posted on Google Classroom; meet me on Google Meet once a week; download the modules I prepared in PDF or PowerPoint and screen the instructional videos I attached; and upload their own drawn emojis as part of their Reflection Paper.

And one day, I just found myself in one small corner of the world, my room with interconnectivity—where I can teach and learn—is now my sanctuary.

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Traditional, Progressive Or Both?

A few years ago, I read a post by one of my students on a social networking site, telling his classmates how he met me in a student press congress in Aklan.

He was my freshman student at the Philippine Science High School or PSHS, the state-subsidized high school where Science- and Mathematics-gifted students were taught and trained to pursue science courses when they step onto college. More or less inspired by the Dewey school of thought, this school is programmed to supply the nation’s body of scientists.

In the post, he said he was surprised to see me and went on to say he could not forget their classes with me a few years earlier. In particular, he recalled how their English class was conducted—how, for example, I’d ask them to get “one loose sheet” (of pad paper) to start each lesson or how I’d also tell them to skip one line as they wrote on it.

He also commented on how I would write my full name on the handouts and/or periodic tests I gave them. (At the time, our periodic exams were made by individual teachers following only one syllabus).

He also recalled how I awarded them certificates for their individual achievements in Homeroom (I was their class adviser, too.). For instance, I gave one of their classmates “Best in Journal Writing” while another was awarded for her congeniality, and so on.

Did he hate doing those things? Did they hate me for those things?

Did I “run their class like a slave plantation,” where they were just “told to do or accomplish something”? Was that how I made him or them feel? Probably. Probably not.

Did I make them feel the way Charles Darwin or Winston Churchill did in their Latin classes? He must have wondered about the purpose of making them do it again and again. So did I ever tell them why they needed to do it? Probably. I must have implied its importance to them. But did I help him process or understand it? Should I have?

I did them because I thought they were the right thing to do.

Being enrolled in the country’s premiere science high school, my student must have been swamped and exhausted by their biology, chemistry and physics classes that observed methods, procedures and all that. So did he expect something else from his English class—that it would do away with the methodical ways of doing things? Maybe. But whatever I did, I am certain that I didn’t want to make them feel like the prisoners in Fresnes.

Reading his post only made me recall how I was aware and overly particular of my routines as a teacher. It reminded me of the consistency I wanted to cultivate in them, which surely formed part of an honestly traditional approach.

Years later, I would begin to appreciate the post because more than anything, it made one thing clear to me—that along with those instructional routines, I did not only promote order in class but also sought to “cultivate their individuality”.

I must have replicated the traditional discourse I inherited—what my teachers did in their time some ten or twenty years back. I even used the same phrases my teachers used in our own high school—even adopting their mannerisms in instructing students in class. Of course, I knew some of my teacher’s pet words back in those days. And they never left my memory—they became my very own.

I virtually echoed my teachers in my own classrooms at the time. I could say I learned so much from the organization and the routine of it all—I am sure not all of my students appreciated it; but I’m glad that that’s what my student also remembered.

In their class activities and projects, I started with calling the roll, prayer, and so on—order and routine—yes, consistency—but I also made sure I allowed them to express themselves in the form of learning outcomes and assessments.

While their armchairs were all lined up separately—that is, six rows by five columns—yes, 30 of them—I made sure I broke them into groups during seatwork, quizzes, and projects. Every now and then, I would ask them to work with a partner or in threes or more to finish a group essay.

I must have also allowed the architectonic dimension—the configuration of the learning space—to work for them. So, say, in a session, armchairs would be uprooted from their usual spots—and lifted (usually dragged) to groups of three or four.

Once they did that, I’d feel relieved because by then, when the noise and the chatter already began, I knew that they wouldn’t feel isolated anymore. I knew that doing things in groups would help them work better.

But then again, I’d direct them to focus on their task. Giving them discussion questions, I’d ask them to churn out ideas and insights from each other and come up with collective answers to the questions.

In these instances, I loved how the routine is made to work constantly with “deviations from sameness”—by reaching out to their individualities. How the structure of groups allowed them to open their minds to free expression—and how the same let them work as a group so their minds were drawn to cohere to one idea or statement.

Did I succeed in trying to make them more reflective persons? Maybe. Were the ten-or-so essays plus their quarterly projects they themselves helped choose or determine for the whole year make them more introspective? Maybe. Across the lessons, I would also ask for individual output—but these were also shared to the class in the sense that I wanted to always affirm them.

I remember how they also performed well in grammar exercises but also remember how I looked forward to reading their essays and reflections. Following a syllabus, I chose to have fewer grammar exercises and made sure they rather devoted more hours to finishing their “Book of Myself” scrapbooks which they submitted at the end of the first quarter.

In all these, I think that the traditional and the didactic was pervasive in my classes, from the instructional routine—I regularly telling them to observe the order and the specifics of a particular output—to the tests or assessments—how their individual ideas should be made to cohere to a more sensible whole. But the same can be said about how I chose to be progressive—which was expressed in the routine group work where each of the student’s interests and personalities was given space and expressed so that it stood out.

I must have—in the ideas of Rousseau—let my scholars “reason” for themselves. After all, I only literally “put the problems before them and let them solve it themselves”. I gave them guide questions and it was up to them to draw their own papers, presentations and/or any other output. I relished how such progressive approach drew their varied and exciting output, performances, or participation.

Reflecting on my student’s sentiment, I rather chose to think that that was not everything in my class. What he wrote was probably only what made some impressions upon him.

If it were so, then were these the only things he learned from that class? What did he really learn from it?

Did I only help build a social architecture of sameness or did I, too, help produce creative thinkers and introspective individuals?

The said routines may have been a form of “forcing something on them”—or at least some of them—but I also remember, in various instances I “let them do what they want to do in their own time at their own pace”.

I am sure at one time or another I had also been more agreeable in their class or lenient in their participation or their submissions—probably to the extent that A.S. Neill of Summerhill may even be smiling at me.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

The Left-handed Armchair

ONE MORNING IN GRADE 1, section Kanda, the pupils were excited to see a new thing in their classroom.

Everyone was talking about it: we were looking at it, yes, marveling at it. After all, we’d never seen anything like it before.

A beautiful thing made of wood—sleek, polished and brown, smooth brown. Anyone who entered our small classroom couldn’t miss it. Because it was not like our desks.

It was an armchair. And it was left-handed. Made especially for Clara, our teacher’s daughter, who was also our classmate. Her father made it for her.

So on this particular day, Clara sat on her new, left-handed brown armchair near her mother’s table at the back of the rest of us facing the chalkboard. She attended our class in her new armchair while we sat and wrote in our desks.

At the time, I must have wondered why they had to make her own armchair when she could also have used the desk just like us.

On one hand, the armchair must have given her space to work on—but I doubt it: that armchair was in fact smaller than our desk. And I remember it was more comfortable writing on our desks.

Maybe Clara must not have been anymore distracted in her armchair; yet, I’m sure, sitting in that lone armchair away from us deprived her of the conversation with us, her classmates.

Clara was probably limited by the desk—so it wasn’t useful to her at the time. Probably her parents—our teacher—deemed it best that she learn to write properly by supporting her left hand—and that cannot be done other than providing her a left-handed armchair where she could write.

But whether one wrote with his left hand or right hand, the desk I shared with my seatmate was big enough to accommodate both our hands. It also had drawers where we put our books and writing materials.

Why did she really have to have an armchair? Was she being distracted—or bullied—by her seatmate? Did we, her classmates, annoy her in any way that she had to be placed separately from us? Maybe. I cannot anymore remember—I was only 6-or-so.

So why did she need the armchair? Was she given it based on her whim? Was it the whim of her parents? Clara was a quiet one, but she was a regular kid like us—so why was there even a need for her to be distanced—as in displaced—from the rest of the class?

Years later, I would not see Clara sitting in that left-handed armchair—in Grade 2 or anytime later. In later grades, she sat in the two-pupil desk just like us. Did her mother request our next-grade teachers to accommodate her armchair and was refused? Or did she just outgrow (the size of) the armchair itself?

If any, my classmate Clara’s left-handed armchair story shows that the one-size-fits-all approach in education obviously did not work and this was in the early 1980s Philippines.

Isn’t this what the New Learning is talking about—that a traditional approach does not usually suit everyone? While intended to serve a purpose, the tool of education used at the time—the desk—did not particularly suit the individual needs of the pupils. So a different kind of a learning tool—an armchair—was considered the alternative.

For one, Clara was fortunate she had parents who thought of an alternative to whatever she needed at the time. They thought it better for her to use an armchair. And they had leeway because Clara’s teacher was her own mother—she could give anything she needed in her own class.

The armchair was intended to suit Clara’s need—but did she learn fast or better in it? If it did, it certainly represented the breaking away from the tradition and the norm of the desk—to fit the need of an individual. It literally did away with the traditional desk.

Did it then form part of the “conscious, well-thought-through aspect of learning” deemed necessary by Clara’s teacher who was her own mother? So did it really help her?

Using the left-handed armchair must have helped her to write well or learn better, but was it, after all, just another tool of the traditional approach, another representation of the didactic pedagogy—because it also rather limited Clara’s social interaction and isolated her from us?