Resisténsya

Aba ánang sirám kan buhay kan mga táwong igwá kaini. An resisténsya kan sarong táwo susog sa saiyang salud, sa mga bágay na namána niya sa pamilya, sa kultura, sa klima, sa saiyang kinakakán; segun man sa mga pangyayári sa saiyang palibot, sa saiyang komunidád o ibán pa. An sinasábi tang resisténsya dai nakatiwangwáng sana. Bakong gamá-gamá. Kun igwa kita nin resisténsya, dai ta saná mapapangyári an mga bágay, madadaog ta pa an minakontra sato. Kun an gamá-gamá ngaya iyo an tubig, an resisténsya iyo an kinompresor na tubig. Kaipuhan tang manu’dan kun pa’no gamiton an ináapod na resisténsya, o an báskog nga kusog. An mga nagpaparádaralágan nin hararáyo dai man tulos minakurutipas pagtanog pa saná kan silbáto. Mayong kitang dakul na magiginibo kun dai maluwáyluway, dai matyaga. Kun igwá man kita nin kusog alágad pabiribigla man lang, siring yan sa kikilát na biglang matáma sa dagá, nakakakilaghán, nakakadiskwido, alágad waáy pulós. An ginasiling na  resisténsya iyo an kuryenteng hababa saná an boltáhe, alágad haloy na panahon matao nin enerhiya, mahátag sang kusog, sige sanáng láad, dai napapalsok.

Sinurublian sa Hiligaynon

iban, iba

báskog, maurag, pinakamarhay

nga, na

waáy pulós, mayong kamanungdanan

ginasiling, sinasabing

mahatag, matao

sang, nin

Susog sa “Energy” na yaon sa Worldly Virtues: A Catalogue of Reflections ni Johannes Gaertner. New York: Viking Press, 1990, 75.

Heroes

This school year, our search is on for the new batch of heroes.

Despite the ill effects of the media and other similar influences, we would want to think that a culture of admirable students still pervades our schools today.

Everyday we see them going in and out of the campus, baring their persons in commendable degrees—a well-mannered, dutiful, cultured lot, whose real persons and stories need to be emulated; or to the very least, appreciated, at least appreciated.

We are inspired by students who are courteous, basically tactful, reasonably straightforward, and not necessarily quiet. We see hope in a devoted student who keeps his word about submitting his late paper on Friday. Or what a delight it would be to meet a young junior who greets you one unholy afternoon with a forthright smile and a warm “Hi, Sir!” or “How are you, Ma’am?”  By these students we cannot just help but be astonished. And inspired.

We see streaks of hope in a student who gives way to a teacher when he passes by their clique. We most admire one who asks to be given a task not only because he knows he will be graded for it but because he or she is convinced that there is something to learn from it.

How about a student who offers a teacher to carry their notebooks to and from their classrooms? Or an anonymous someone—barely a class officer—who readily borrows the eraser from the teacher and cleans the writing on the board?

We can’t help but be amazed by these admirable values which are redundantly the essentials. Sadly, however, some of our students may not be through getting to know them or any aspect of genuine learning, which can prepare them for life.

Yet, all the same we remain optimistic that we have hope in some others who are otherwise—who do otherwise. So we move on to looking beyond what is obvious here and now. Frankly we believe it is not so hard to find a hero, an odd man out. Daily we launch a search for a student who does not conform to a culture that is tolerant of the vices of a child, the whims of Peter Pan or the caprices of a Dennis the Menace.

He or she is one growing person who is willing to live and live well in good manner. One who will succeed and whose name will be worth every frame in a world’s nameless, priceless, unadvertised, and insignificant hall of fame—because he or she will be one etched in a teacher’s heart—one who will inspire the teacher enough until his or her retirement.

It will not be so difficult to stumble on admirable persons who can make sense of what we have been doing the most of our lives. The search for these persons has always been on going.

There are some students out there whose young lives can shed light to others—some who can deserve to be called not just students, but scholars.

A Good Year

It has been a good school year.

After some ten months of working and being with your high school students, you cannot help but look back to the good days.

Nothing has been more remarkable than the days lived with eager, wonderful students who made you realize much about many things. These are some of the many things you will not leave behind— these and other stories you will not ever trade for any other value in the world.

The Section 1 students whom you “advised” [you were their adviser for some two quarters, substantially] are a good, growing lot. Led by their president Anita, the class have already been lauded by their subject teachers who just find them easy, light and manageable.

For one, Siena’s bubbly attitude complements her classmates’ love for humor. If at all, Siena has enjoyed the mango float given by the class for a job well done during the cleanup day—after tirelessly cleaning the classroom for almost a day, she and her classmates Koy and Perlita, to name a few, did not deserve anything less than that sumptuously delicious treat which they themselves prepared. Talk of being and acting out of [a strong sense of] independence—or more aptly, responsibility.

Along with the other boys, Roch, Daniel and Mico have all been a good part of the freshman team who have exuded the bright aura every Monday morning. This figured well especially in the flag ceremony leadership which was lauded by the school director herself. You know the best is yet to come for them.

You appreciated your junior student Shem when he consulted you through a text message on a particular term in his research paper. You were enjoying the Dinagyang night when he texted you, asking for the right word to use in his report. You were flattered that this junior student from Pototan, Iloilo counted you in as his dictionary. Fair and kind, he must have been flattered when you told him in front of his classmates that he has been disciplined in your class.

Meanwhile, you have always considered Shem’s classmate Clint amiable and warm company fairly enough to properly set the mood of the third-year class. Along with the rest of the boys, his light and smiling face has not failed to set the best mood for the rest of his classmates. Perhaps one of the tallest boys in the batch, his optimistic countenance cannot simply go unnoticed, especially in his senior year.

Ever since you got to work with the school paper’s editors, you have always known Val to have the critical eye. The boy’s meticulousness was confirmed to you by his previous adviser. When you didn’t hear his name announced in the regional contest for editorial writing, you realized then that the boy is fit for some other, loftier things. He must have taken the editorial writing skill to heart, that in no time he rewrote his contest piece on Consumer’s Rights Act for the school paper issue. He surely deserves an award for such an effort.

You are equally happy for Stanley and Doris, Val’s fellow editors who laboriously took to editing the many articles of the school paper. Though you could just be apologetic to Doris in learning that her front-page article was “murdered” in the press—there is perhaps no one to equal her enthusiasm to finish the work she is assigned to do, given the time constraints and a whole lot of other workload.

Their fellow senior Stanley, meanwhile, is one success story—what with his all-out smile when he was cited for outstanding performance in feature writing in the Punta Villa regional writing tilt in December. You relish in his newfound skill as he should be lauded for the two substantial feature stories—the school gym article and the coach’s story—that must have made the school aware and feel more privileged for such two blessings.

Also, you will remember the generosity of spirit of one Ernest, a Manila-born freshman who sustained the odds of being in a new environment, eager to learn new things and share life with his new found friends. Ernest’s politeness and composure have always amazed you to say that the boy is very well ahead and well prepared to undertake bigger tasks in the future. You believe he will do well and he can pull through.

Among other things, these are only some of the many stories—call them blessings—which you cannot trade for other values in the world. The days with your junior, senior and freshmen students will not be forgotten. You’re sure they are here to stay wherever you go. As long as you live.

After some ten months of working and being with your high school students, you cannot help but look back now in regret. Regret because you do not intend to pass this way again—regret because you are finally calling it “quits” for teaching.

After all, it has truly been a good year.

Finding Hero

Brats and Other Failures, Scholars and Success Stories

We cannot remain silent anymore. We do not wish to contain this discontent to any further extent. It would be sheer hypocrisy and outright uselessness on our part, or on the sensibility of those teachers and other constituents in this community who commit their time and effort to help produce a genuine scholar, one student whom we do not consider ideal—but rather one real, attainable person.

There is a pervasive culture of spoiled brats in our school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in disgraceful degrees of being unruly, undisciplined, gang-like, virtually becoming a bunch of hooligans. These people have to be told something, at least something.

The solid waste management campaign we recently initiated during the Do Day has the most visible proof of apathy and lack of concern—erosion if not a disgusting absence of values—among our students. The students’ recommendation that there be one janitor in charge for every floor to clean their classrooms only presents a depressing scenario for us, teachers—does it now mean that students cannot deliver the simple task of segregating or at least throwing their trash sensibly to where they belong? What a scholar-ly modest proposal!

In the boys’ main dormitory, most if not all students are hardly disciplined—they read Sunday papers and leave all pages scattered and crumpled. Maybe they expect their maids to put their litter properly. Unfortunately they have to be told they are not in their homes—they have to be reminded they are dormers. Or maybe they have to be told about an axiom that says live and let live.

Oftentimes dormers bang the office telephone and the phone in the booths. They dribble basketball even during nighttime inside their rooms, in the corridors, and the lobby. Most of the time they watch television in an unreasonably loud volume. They leave electric fans switched on after they used them. They slam the doors of their rooms every time—every time, any time.

They are hardly grateful for any help offered them on their fast food orders or laundries by a teacher or staff desk volunteer. After eating their stuffs, they scatter styros everywhere—ground floor benches, water dispensers, stairs, everywhere.

Some of them scamper around the halls minutes before midnight—even when some of their roommates are already asleep. They make noise and all noise in the dead of night. They scatter their trash and leftover food like there is no tomorrow. The janitors—who have come and gone one after the other—constantly lamented the waste perennially scattered everywhere in the comfort rooms and the halls.

Many times in the cafeteria we encounter students interrupting the queue to get their orders ahead of those who are persistently falling in line. In this instance, a cafeteria staff would be kind enough to accommodate these singits while the rightful people are kept waiting. This is chiefly unforgivable. The basic rule of falling in line and waiting for one’s turn is as elementary as a kindergarten policy. Students who hardly see others in front of their noses just need to be told to go back to kindergarten. We pity these students if ever they do this inconsiderate act with a queue of cafeteria-goers who compose Bin Laden’s lot or Bush’s army. We do not know where they might find themselves once they get to face their fellow brats.

In classrooms, students are said to haggle everything with the teacher—from lessons to grades. They always negotiate to do other stuffs aside from the ones the teacher has designed or agreed with them to do. Even though it is too unreasonable, they would insist on doing what they want. What? It seems that they want to believe they know better than the teacher because the teacher always ought to “take off from where students are coming from.” We do not think the teacher is just there to be among their clique—intelligent or otherwise. In other words, a little bit of respect for the teacher—at least the fact that the teacher is older than them—should send them to think they need to first listen to a teacher before they negotiate anything, regardless of their predicament. If they need no instruction or directions, then, they must be told they must have come to the wrong place.

In spite of their brilliant ideas, which we recognize, acknowledge and applaud—they have no right to be arrogant about their knowledge. Such attitude only validates the fact that they do not really know enough. Failure then looms for these persons who see their teachers as inferior to them because in their own senses, they know they are better. This is too sad.

In this teacher writer’s three classes, many students failed in the first quarter. These failing students hardly complied with most class requirements necessary to pull up their grades. In language arts and journalism classes, we cannot help but wonder why most students would not turn in critical papers for evaluation—classic reviews, poems, homework, group or quad output. Despite countless extensions of deadline, some students would not turn in anything. They could not simply seem to care. Maybe we have extended the deadline more than enough that they lost interest in the subject matter—because they were stolen the thrill or pressure with which they can finish an impressive work. But we cannot just accept such excuse. A sensible student can always do better than staying mediocre the rest of his student life.

We recognize that all these apparent attitudes—the students’ value system—have to be redirected and led into something which everyone can admire or at least hope for. We cannot be so sadder than now, given such attitudes affecting our sensibility. Something has to be done—something has to be done. And we will, we will.

If we do not, we would simply spoil students and make them all brats, who will later mutate into successful monsters in any civilization where they can choose to thrive. Suffice it so say, anywhere they go, brats will never succeed—unless we accept that ours is a world ruled by brats. Yes, indeed Bush and other brats are ruling the world now. But we believe further that the world will not end in him or Bin Laden or Saddam or other brats who made news and money out of some childish folly or some foolish childhood.

As far as our brats are concerned, their gross lack of any values—technically, virtues—poses a challenge to all of us around here who still believe that basic and traditional values can prove true all through.

Our students—scholars, as we aptly call them—need to be told to grow up. They cannot remain pampered in all wrongly defines senses of the word “nurture.” We cannot just give them the fattest fish all the time. We will be forever condemned if we realize one day we would have not taught them how to fish by which they can survive all their way through. We would have been useless. This would be utter futility.

On the contrary, we see traces of an admirable scholar in some students. In their presence we see a glint of hope that all our efforts here—present, past, future—appreciated, underrated, or uncompensated—will never go to waste.


There is an apparent culture of admirable scholars pervading the school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in commendable degrees—a well-mannered, dutiful, cultured lot, whose real persons and stories need to be emulated. Or to the very least, appreciated. At least appreciated.

An inspiration we can obtain from the presence of students who are otherwise courteous, basically tactful, reasonably straightforward, and not necessarily quiet or submissive. In this environment inhabited by hooligans and grade hagglers, we can find a dormer who still secures gate pass duly from the dorm manager when he goes to the church on weekends or worship days. We also have a devoted student who keeps his word about submitting his late paper on Friday. Or what a delight it would be to meet a young junior who greets you one unholy afternoon with a forthright smile and a warm “Hi, Sir!” By these students we cannot just help but be dumbfounded. And inspired.

We see streaks of hope in a student who gives way to a teacher when he passes by their clique. We most admire one who asks to be given a task not only because he knows he will be graded for it but because he or she is convinced that there is something to learn from it. How about a student who offers a teacher to carry their notebooks to and from their classrooms? Or an anonymous someone—barely a class officer—who willingly borrows the eraser from the teacher and cleans the writing on the board?

We salute these scholars.

These basic, admirable values are redundantly the essentials. Sadly, however, some of our students referred in the first part of this lamentation are not through getting to know any elemental thing about these or any aspect of genuine learning, which can prepare them for life.

All the same we remain optimistic that we have hope in some others who do otherwise; who are otherwise. So we move on to looking beyond what is obvious here and now.

Frankly we believe it is not so hard to find a hero, an odd man out. Daily we launch a search for a martyr who does not conform with a culture that is tolerant of the vices of a child, the whims of Peter Pan or the caprices of a Dennis the Menace.

He or she is one growing person who is willing to live and live well in good manner. One who will succeed and whose name will be worth every frame in a world’s nameless, priceless, unadvertised, and insignificant hall of fame—because he or she will be one etched in a teacher’s heart—one who will inspire the teacher enough until his or her retirement. It will not be so difficult to stumble on admirable persons who can make sense of what we have been doing the most of our lives. The search for these persons has always been on going.

If the failures referred here cannot be molded anymore, there will be some out there whose young lives can shed light to others—some who can be the genuine scholars.

For sure, there will be some.