Poe3

Speak to Us of Teaching

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.

"Speak to us of teaching"

As a high school freshman back in 1988, I would relish looking at my test papers whenever examination papers were returned.  Today is a different story.

In my classes, my students would usually dread examinations, frown at their tests, scowl at the thought of their projects, and even cringe at the thought of a new lesson. The dissimilarity between the two eras is disconcerting. But teaching students these days brings in insights that reflect the tendencies and inclinations of the youth today and their possible future. 

Maybe what they say is true—it’s teacher factor, teacher factor. It’s how the teacher approaches the students with the subject matter. As far as teachers are concerned, they have been trying varied methodologies to approach the situation more eclectically to cater to the diversity of today’s students. 

The students today are not really as diverse as we think they are—they even come from the same lot—kids with very short attention spans who belong to the “remote-control or YouTube generation. They simply want the same thing—they would want to relax during class hours, relish doing nothing in the class during literature classes—etc. Simply because the media must have taught them that everything is attainable at the click of the remote control. 

Someone put it more aptly when he claimed that we cannot always point the finger at the school if there’s something wrong with the students—rather we must check society or the real world and all it has—because what’s wrong in our society makes everything wrong in education. The media and other social external influences have since defined the individual learner.

Because students come to classrooms from their own families, orientations and influences, the manner in which they behave in their classrooms point to the way they are bred and reared in their families. The levels of the education then and now are far from each other. Today’s schools may just be way far different from what schools were before.

True enough. Schools are the second homes—yet it is not the entire breeding ground of character. If homes are more powerful influences to the youth, what does the school have as its ace? The school just takes on where the family [or the sense of it] leaves. 

Nowadays when we hear elderly people whine and tell us, “Times have really changed. It was not like this in our time, blah blah (or something to that effect),” maybe they’re just making sense.

When you are a teacher, most probably, you are a more blessed worker. Despite the meager salary, now and then whined upon in bureaucratic circles and other work entities, your efforts as a teacher are usually paid off [or extremely otherwise shortchanged] the same day you put them forth. In the classroom, you are disposed to see how students display varied reactions about a certain topic. Their sparkling eyes will glow whenever they get a point clarified and learned. One of the joys of teaching is in being able to find for yourself how a student learns on his own and not through your own means.

Moreover, Aristotle said because we are what we repeatedly do—thus excellence is an act of habit. It is the habits that the teacher seeks to impart that matters most to the learner. It is in the way the teacher conducts himself or herself in front of the learning environment that will stick to the mind of the student who, impressionable as he is, will simply copy what he finds desirable or beneficial from his teacher.

Teaching traditions and lifestyles have already changed. Some teachers can get away with being Miss Tapia to their students. Others are becoming more open to democratic and eclectic ways of making the pupils and students learn. They attend seminars and numerous group dynamics to learn much about the styles that suit today’s learners—from their talents to their eccentricities. Therefore, a teacher is a continually challenged worker. He determines his own growth because he is at his own pacing as a learner.

Sadly, however, despite the monstrously large statistics of new teachers each year, the teaching profession may be an obsolete career—with the unceasing demand and supply for call center agents and domestic helpers. The latter jobs prove to be more lucrative and financially helpful. In fact, some teachers abandon teaching to be domestic helpers abroad just to support their families sensibly while they shell in foreign currencies for the government. 

One thing is clear, though. Teaching may not at all be far behind because in each child born to the world, someone out there will just have to make him see about life’s stark realities.

Speak To Us of Teaching

As a high school freshman in Ateneo de Naga back in 1988, I would relish looking at my test papers whenever examination papers were returned. 

Today is a different story. In my classes, my students would usually dread examinations, frown at their tests, scowl at the thought of their projects, and even cringe at the thought of a new lesson. The dissimilarity between the two eras is disconcerting. But teaching students these days brings in insights that reflect the tendencies and inclinations of the youth today and their possible future. 

Maybe what they say is true—it’s teacher factor, teacher factor. It’s how the teacher approaches the students with the subject matter. As far as teachers are concerned, they have been trying varied methodologies to approach the situation more eclectically to cater to the diversity of today’s students. 

The students today are not really as diverse as we think they are—they even come from the same lot—kids with very short attention spans who belong to the “remote-control or YouTube generation. They simply want the same thing—they would want to relax during class hours, relish doing nothing in the class during literature classes—etc. Simply because the media must have taught them that everything is attainable at the click of the remote control. 

Someone put it more aptly when he claimed that we cannot always point the finger at the school if there’s something wrong with the students—rather we must check society or the real world and all it has—because what’s wrong in our society makes everything wrong in education. The media and other social external influences have since defined the individual learner.

Because students come to classrooms from their own families, orientations and influences, the manner in which they behave in their classrooms point to the way they are bred and reared in their families. The levels of the education then and now are far from each other. Today’s schools may just be way far different from what schools were before.

True enough. Schools are the second homes—yet it is not the entire breeding ground of character. If homes are more powerful influences to the youth, what does the school have as its ace? The school just takes on where the family [or the sense of it] leaves. 

Nowadays when we hear elderly people whine and tell us, “Times have really changed. It was not like this in our time, blah… blah… [or something to that effect]” maybe they’re just making sense.

When you are a teacher, most probably, you are a more blessed worker. Despite the meager salary, now and then whined upon in bureaucratic circles and other work entities, your efforts as a teacher are usually paid off [or extremely otherwise shortchanged] the same day you put them forth. In the classroom, you are disposed to see how students display varied reactions about a certain topic. Their sparkling eyes will glow whenever they get a point clarified and learned. One of the joys of teaching is in being able to find for yourself how a student learns on his own and not through your own means.

Moreover, Aristotle said because we are what we repeatedly do—thus excellence is an act of habit. It is the habits that the teacher seeks to impart that matters most to the learner. It is in the way the teacher conducts himself or herself in front of the learning environment that will stick to the mind of the student who, impressionable as he is, will simply copy what he finds desirable or beneficial from his teacher.

Teaching traditions and lifestyles have already changed. Some teachers can get away with being Miss Tapia to their students. Others are becoming more open to democratic and eclectic ways of making the pupils and students learn. They attend seminars and numerous group dynamics to learn much about the styles that suit today’s learners—from their talents to their eccentricities. Therefore, a teacher is a continually challenged worker. He determines his own growth because he is at his own pacing as a learner.

Sadly, however, despite the monstrously large statistics of new teachers each year, the teaching profession may be an obsolete career—with the unceasing demand and supply for call center agents and domestic helpers. The latter jobs prove to be more lucrative and financially helpful. In fact, some teachers abandon teaching to be domestic helpers abroad just to support their families sensibly while they shell in foreign currencies for the government. 

One thing is clear, though. Teaching may not at all be far behind because in each child born to the world, someone out there will just have to make him see about life’s stark realities.

First published. 2006

Consider the Cross

Consider the Cross.

Two straight lines intersecting each other, which may not necessarily be of equal lengths, but on which you can spend equally substantial time to ponder.

First is the vertical line. Place your right hand opposite your heart and from there starting from your heart, raise your hand to your head gently. From your heart up to your head, and to God, it is as if you tell Him, “God, take all my heart, my will, my intellect, take all of them I raise them all up to you.

You can please utter “Ika na ang bahala” (You are the one in charge); or you say—“Ika man nanggad ang Bathala” (You are, indeed, the Supreme Being). You sound very much like the Jesuit patron Ignatius when you do.

Guiding your hand from your heart to your head to Him, let them all go. As renewal groups always [ex]claim—let go and let God. The vertical gesture says someone is your God. From where you are standing, seated or lounging, you need to reach for Someone higher than you, upwards. You alone cannot do anything. Without God, with no sense of Divine Providence, what can you achieve? Certainly, Someone else Is higher than you are. Certainly He Knows better, and He can do better than you. American recluse poet Emily Dickinson would even write—“He’s Somebody. Who are you?”

Then, the horizontal line. Place your hand gently from the left shoulder and to your heart again then to the right. The horizontal gesture says that others are like you. It also says you need to reach out to others because grounded on earth, it is in your nature to move leftwards, rightwards, horizontally.

From your left side to your right side, that is how you are advised to relate to life. You are directed to go sideward to see the meaning of life further in other human beings like you. Grounded on earth like you, other people are also waiting for companionship. Yes, an anecdote even said that millions of people are waiting to be spoken to; people moving left and right like you might also need to puzzle out the same mystery you have been confused with for years.

Yes. Take the chance. Best reach out to them. With some of them, you can clarify your too many questions. With others, you need not ask too many. And with a fewer special ones, questions, not answers are the least things that would bother you.

What a sensible way to make sense of monotony! If all symbols fail to justify things about which you ask too many questions, what blessing it is to look at the Cross and realize its essence. What a sensible way to explain why you make the sign every time you pass Church or other sacred spots.

Contemplating the Cross this way calls to mind Christ’s laymanizing of Moses’s Ten Commandments—two laws on life only: Love God with all your heart, with all your might. That’s the vertical line, that’s your vertical life. Love your neighbour as yourself. That’s the horizontal line, that’s your horizontal life.

Consider the Cross. 

Satuyang Rasa

Hale Qui Emma, Na Orog na Namoot

Obra Ni Clemente Manaog

1997

Magabat an boot co na maghale,

Alagad caipuhan co na mag-uli 

Ngonyan na banggui.

Sa aga, matugdoc aco nin harong 

Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat,

Cun sain aco na sana an macacadangog 

Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.

Sa palibot caini, matanom aco 

Nin anom na poon nin niyog 

Na mas masarig sa saco, 

Na magiging mga harigi—

Manga pusog na pundasyon 

Can manga matuninong cong aldaw

Na dae co naman madadangog. 

Ma’wot co na sinda magserbing

Maliwanag na ilaw sa dalan

Sa macangirhat na diclom, 

Cun sain aco ma-agui 

Sa sacuyang pag-uli

Ngonyan na banggui.

Ma’wot co man na yaon sinda duman

Asin na aco mamidbid ninda. 

Alagad cun sinda malingaw saco, 

Dae na bale.

Nungca na aco mahanap 

Nin caribay ninda, nin huli ta aram co

Na sinda mga marhay.

Alagad atyan na banggui, 

Hahagadon co na sinda

Magserbing mga maiimbong 

Na candila cataid co.

Asin cun aco naca-uli na

Sigurado aco na sa aga

Iguwa na aco nin harong 

Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat

Cun sain aco na sana

An macacadangog 

Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.

Asin an iba macacadangog.

Realism and magic realism

Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan surely catches our attention because Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers grows feathers after she kills Mila Kunis’s Lily backstage to perform the Black Swan role in the final act. You cannot just forget the film because of that.

This psychological thriller—featuring Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers, a ballerina haunted by some schizophrenic ambition—brims with magic realism, an aesthetic style in which “magical elements are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality.” The effects particularly in the final ballet scene where Nina grows more feathers than the previous times it appeared would surely remind us of the film.

Because of the device used, we are made to believe that “magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented in a straightforward manner” allowing the “real” (Nina Sayers dream to be the Swan Queen) and the “fantastic” (she really becomes a Swan) to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

The obsession to become the Swan Queen later brings into the character graphic hallucinations that eventually cost Nina Sayers’ life.

Natalie’s facial features being transformed into a swan—rouged eyes, aquiline nose and elongated neck—all compliment to a dramatic flourish—where at the end of the performance, even we the audience could be convinced that she very well looks as the best Swan Queen for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

While Nina Sayers’ obsession for the Swan Queen role is enough persuasion, the horrific undertones notwithstanding, we the audience get the eerie feeling in Aronofsky’s close-up shots of the lead character who dances her way to death as the ambition-obsessed ballerina who lived and was haunted by realities she herself created.

Anyone or anything from Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan will win an Oscar. Choreography, effects, actress. Let’s see.

Meanwhile.

The first time I watched Christian Bale’s Dicky Eklund in The Fighter, I already rooted for him to win a Best Supporting Actor citation.

A drama about boxer “Irish” Micky Ward’s unlikely road to the world light welterweight title, The Fighter features Ward’s Rocky-like rise as he is shepherded by half-brother Dicky, a boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded in life after nearly being knocked out by drugs and crime.

A far cry from Batman and his previous roles, Christian Bale’s Dicky Eklund exudes with stark realism, a has-been boxer backed up by his mother who hoped for a could have been contender, reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954).

Not another boxing movie at the Oscars you might say. But there is more to this boxing movie which rather “depicts subjects as they appear in everyday life.”

In The Fighter, we see Dicky Eklund’s mere claim to fame is his 1978 boxing match with Sugar Ray Leonard, where Eklund knocked down Leonard, who eventually won the match.

Now a crack addict, Eklund is in front of HBO cameras making a documentary about him. Dicky has also acted as one of the two trainers for half-brother Micky Ward, a decade younger than him, first known as a brawler and used by other boxers as a stepping stone to better boxers.

Both boxers are managed by their overbearing mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) who believes it better to keep it all in the family. Now unreliable owing to his crack addiction, Dicky’s move with Alice at one of Micky’s bouts dawns on the latter that his boxing career is being stalled and even undermined by them, who are only looking out for themselves.

The situation allows Bale’s character to deliver an un-contrived performance that highlights a family drama and gives sibling rivalry a kind of high never before seen onscreen before.

Meanwhile, Amy Adams’ Charlene Fleming—Micky’s new girlfriend, a college dropout and now local bartender who inspires him—pulls out the fulcrum to the other side, opposite Micky’s family, when she salvages him from this predicament.

Much to Alice and Dick’s anger, Micky comes to choose between them and Charlene. The story’s rising action renders each character emotionally charged—each one wanting to claim what is good for the fighter, and each one being allowed to shine individually onscreen. Awesome story.

Bale’s character greatly evolved from the Batman lead role and other virile roles to one that exudes with so much life. Like Tom Hanks’ Andrew Beckett in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993), Bale must have shed weight to fit the role of a has-been boxer who makes business out of his brother just like his mother.

Earning three Oscar nominations for Bale, Adams and Leo, The Fighter drives some of the best punches among other films I have seen in the past year.

The first time I watched it last year, I immediately thought it was essentially noteworthy of recognition. Christian Bale’s crack[ed] character is so real you will find him in your neighborhood.

With the larger-than-life performance of an underdog who wants to bounce back, Bale’s character transforms the movie about his brother to a movie about himself. If at all, he is the Fighter being referred to in the film.

Let’s see how some real practitioners of the craft consider these performances, which other people might call art.