ariellalisan.org – Homeward Bound

I’M BACK to the contemplative me — which is the normal me, as it happens.

By the way…

It’s July 21 today, so we’re two days past the rumored doomsday. And what? Are we all dead now? Fortunately, the July-18-Earthquake thing was simply someone’s attempt at becoming famous or at proving how powerful a tool is the internet in creating chaos.

Yesterday we had a triple birthday celebration at home. Last Saturday was my older sister’s birthday, yesterdya was my niece’s, and today is my bro’s. We rented a videoke machine and we took turns with the mic from lunchtime yesterday until midnight. My cousin and her two daughters, who have just arrived from the states joined us. My nieces and my cousin’s daughter get on well with each other easily, thanks to high school musical.

I’M VERY glad, you know, that I’m not the only one who’s getting more and more excited to learn about physics. Some of my students are sometimes overly excited about the topics we’re discussing and some future topics I asked them to start reading about.

I think it’s just fine to talk about my students in this blog.

There’s my student named Gwenathan who would always ask me questions from time to time, asking me to explain this phenomena, that equation, etc. I admit, I’ve never been that interested in physics when I was in high school. I was just amused when I was able to figure out the Bernoulli equation back then and what it meant. But Gwenathan is different. He comes up to me during my free time (and sometimes, even when I’m having my lectures in other classes) to ask questions. Wouldn’t you be glad to have a student like that?

IT HAPPENED again after almost eight years — only, it’s stronger this time.

I thought it wouldn’t rain as hard as it did yesterday. When we arrived from Marbel at about half past three yesterday, the sky was not really dark. After my last class, it started to drizzle. Then the wind started to blow. Soon after, the sky darkened and a heavy downpour followed.

The students who were getting ready to go home started to worry. There were only few vehicles on the school grounds so some of them started walking under the rain out of fear that the rain would not stop until nightfall.

I told my co-teacher that it was the strongest rain I have seen in years. She told me that it was just normal. But I had a gut feeling that if it would last for half an hour more, a flashflood of the same magnitude of the one that took place on November 1, 2000, would hit our town.

THIS MORNING our librarian gave us photocopies of an article from the broadsheet about DepEd’s implementing guidelines on the 6-hour workday for teachers.

I read it carefully and I realized that it actually didn’t shorten the number of hours of work in a day. It only limits the number of hours of classroom teaching to six. The remaining two hours would be spent for teaching-related activities like, preparation of lesson plans, visual aids, rubrics, home visitation, consultation, among others. It doesn’t make a really big difference.

Nevertheless, I appreciate it because it is never easy to facilitate classroom activities for more than six hours. When I reach home after each school day, I could feel that my leg muscles are sore. I also don’t talk a lot at home, else, I damage my vocal folds. I even told my mother, “Nay, sayo jud ko ani  matigulang.” [Mother, with this stress, I'll face old age early.]

Good thing, teachers who are given loads of more than 6 hours a day are entitled to an additional compensation computed at the same hourly rate of the regular compensation. That means, since I’m given a seven-hour load each day, I’m entitled to another one hour worth of compensation. (Yay, I won’t need to ask for cash advance. Haha.) However, when there’s no available funds (which is true for most schools), an hour of overtime work shall be counted as 1.25 hours of service credits.

I HAVE no right to complain.

In many schools in the country today, teachers have to teach inside classrooms with more than 80 students for more than seven hours a day. They spend their own money for their visual aids and other instructional materials. Their classrooms are neither well ventilated nor sound proofed. Moreover, they teach low success learners.

In my case, my students are fast learners–the cream of the crop of SOCSARGEN, in fact. Our classrooms are good and our facilities quite better than what regular schools have. The only problem I have is that I’m teaching for seven hours a day. The only break I have is the 20-minute recess and the 60-minute lunch break. You see, the number of hours we spend in school is more than eight hours. Another thing is the pressure from our heads. They are expecting us to perform well–to maintain our school’s reputation.

I admit it’s very difficult. But then again, I have no right to complain. And there’s no use complaining. Thousands of teachers in the country have raised their voices since long ago about the wretched situation of teachers (so wretched that many of us are buried in loans or payday loans) and Philippine public schools, in general. Anything happened so far?