Anna Liza Alfafara has developed the building blocks of her career through her English teacher.
Looking back, I acknowledge how some people have made a remarkable impact on the person that I am today. Special people that I met from my childhood days to the ones I mingled with during an event in my adult years. I still can remember them with a smile, knowing they have touched my life in their own simple way, even without them knowing it!
I’ve been writing since grade school all through high school, but I can say with conviction that my English 101 college professor, Mrs. De Vera made a huge impact to me till this very day. Not one teacher (ever, in my years of learning the English language) has taught me the way she did.
She painstakingly explained and gave all the examples she can give from the basics to the advanced form of the verbs, sentence construction, etc. After which, there would be endless exercises, seat quizzes and assignments of the lessons taken. She would also ask her students to write sentences in various verb forms over and over again, till we mastered them, and this went on for a semester. And I guess, that was the magic there.
I wouldn’t have known the usage of present, past and future perfect tenses, if not for her. This may sound funny and trivial to some, but I consider my learning from her as the primary building block of my career as an online writer and blogger.
I appreciate her even more now, 20 years after, in this age of Facebook and social media, where people freely air their thoughts and ideas wherever possible. Every time I see people committing grammatical errors in their statuses and updates, I secretly wish they had their own Mrs. De Vera in their lives to save them from further embarrassment.
To Mrs. De Vera, you just don’t know how much I appreciate the things you taught me. May your tribe increase!