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Darwin Moya narrates how he started and finished his rookie sem as a teacher in college. 

I used to imagine myself on the first day of classes, speaking in front of students, explaining to them the requirements of the course and what to expect for the semester. I really don’t know if I fit the mold. I had a really weak voice, I tend to talk too fast and I’m prone to spaced out moments. But in spite of all those, in me was a real desire to teach. Come November 2010, an opportunity to realize that desire popped up. And so I stepped into the role… not knowing that it was way different from what I imagined.

First day of classes, I felt intimidated. I was like a poser, putting on a show while at the back of my mind, I deeply questioned my credibility to teach. Do these kids even believe half of what I’m saying? Or do they see me as just another kid forced unto them by the college for lack of instructors? And it didn’t really help that I could pass off as one of their classmates: guards accosting me, searching for my ID or professors barging in on my class simply because they thought I was a student.

It was a recurring theme throughout the semester: self-doubt and trying to act nonchalantly about it.

But minus all those personal dramas, there were very rewarding moments in my rookie semester: those very real moments of silence that made me believe my students were actually listening to me (or so I thought! lol), the pleasant surprise of insightful comments during class, and reading papers that progressed from mere regurgitations to actual independent thought! Of course, reading students’ comments on Facebook and seeing my pictures taken by them were quite exhilirating… that is until they booted me out of their FB group and deleted those pictures with rather hilarious comments.

And that’s another thing that added to my impostor side. I don’t take myself seriously, how could I possibly expect these guys to take me seriously?! Glad the semester’s over. Ang-hirap kaya mag-panggap.

Fast forward to March 4: done checking the final exams, currently encoding grades on my class sheet. I’ve said it a couple of times throughout the semester that I don’t really care if some of them fail to graduate because of my class. My grading system was very transparent and it was all them. But that Friday, I was quite surprised with how I felt as I punched in the numbers and saw the changing figures in the spreadsheet’s final column. I was rooting for everyone and praying, “Dear Lord, let it be 65 at the very least.” Funny, but that’s really how it went.

And I’m just relieved that I don’t have to explain a failing grade to anyone. I leave my rookie semester with great moments in my memory bank and an army of graduates.

This is an official entry to the The Learning Site’s Christmas Carnival. / Photo source

Karla Singson explains the hardships of a teacher, and how it is always turned around by the natural rewards of teaching.

Let me tell you one thing: teaching sucks. But let me tell you how, and of course, how much.

Looking back, I couldn’t believe I spent a huge chunk of my life teaching. Of course, not professionally, but it was still, in its very essence, teaching. If your criteria is a visual aid and lectures, then my activities all fit.

From 2nd year to 4th year high school, I taught catechism every summer at our local parish. From 2nd year to 4th year college, I taught debate and public speaking in different schools. After college, I taught Marketing in Ateneo de Davao University – such rowdy college students – and also taught for JoBS Academy, another IT and Business school. I am not teaching now, but once in a while, I get projects that let me play teacher for a day or two, for PR, Marketing or Public Speaking. And yes, that sucked.

First of all, teaching sucks your energy. Mostly, you wake up early and/or sleep late. You are paid for the time that you spend inside the classroom but the actual time that you spend in delivering what you’re supposed to deliver takes more time than that. Imagine this: for an hour’s worth of lecture, you might need more than one hour of research and preparation, and when these kids take the exam, you’ll need another hour to check their papers. If it’s an essay exam (ones which I usually give to really measure the depth of understanding) I’d take an extra hour and 3 chocolate bars.

Next, teaching sucks your money. You don’t want to be late for school so you’d take the cab. If you work for a company, you’ll only be subjected to the judgment of your immediate superior. However, if you’re teaching (and a decent one at that), you’ll feel ashamed about going to school late so you’d spend 2 hours worth of your salary just to get there on time. Also, most teachers spend for their school supplies from their own wallets and what’s more, sometimes you’d even find yourself stressing over NOT having to repeat outfits. There you go.

Sometimes, teaching sucks your self-esteem. Your students are not listening. They did not do their assignments. Three quarters of the class flunked your exam. Are you a bad teacher? Well, if you got all three you might want to rethink your career but most of the time, it’s really not your fault. And yes, there will be gossip and haters and you have to face several judging people (Adolescents? What horror!) in a day. So really, every day for a teacher is a gamble on his/her self-esteem. You have to be bulletproof for that.

At rare and memorable times, teaching sucks out your stress as well. Once in a while, you get a student who adds you up on Facebook and tells you what a difference you made in his/her life. Or how you helped him get the job that he eyed. Or even those superficial girls who flunked your subject but only remembered how you wore your outfits excellently. These are the little things that make your day. These are the minute consolations that we work hard for and let us lick our wounds and get ourselves ready for the next day. These are the times when you actually forget this article’s first 3 reasons on why teaching sucks.

Teaching sucks your pride. This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we all know how humility is rare and precious nowadays. In teaching, there will be times when you realize that there are truths greater than the ones you thought you know, and that the students that you’re facing are actually, also, your teachers too. Many times, I always look at my students with pride and I am humbled by the fact that they can go so much farther than how far I’ve gone when I was in their age. And yes, there will be people who look down on you because you don’t have a shining corporate job and you shrug it off because you know that teaching and having teaching as a career is like having a secret heroic mission. And if you know that you are working hard to fulfill this mission, that, most of the time, is truly enough.

So there. You better look at teachers in a different light. Now you know how awesome teachers are, I’ll leave you to comment with your praises. 😉

This is an official entry to the The Learning Site’s Christmas Carnival. / Photo source

Shirgie Fulgencio shares how he learned some life’s lessons from zorv, waterball and zipline. This is his way of saying that experience is always the best teacher.

When I was teaching in a grade school, I used to explain things using a figure of speech called analogy. Analogy for me is the best way to explain or support the idea that I want to convey to my students. This is using a literal example or obvious illustration of things. It can be through a scenario, objects, people and even experiences.

The reason why I used Analogy as a method of teaching is because I learned a lot from
it. Analogy is everywhere, in fact this is how Universe speaks to us to remind us about
life and to teach us some valuable lessons.

Who would have thought that extreme activities like rolling on the hill through the zorv, running on the water through the waterball and flying in the air through a zipline can teach us life’s lessons?

I think this is the Universe’s way of reminding us about life and about our inner
capability to become infinite. Before we get too emotional here, I would like to share the lessons of life that I learned from one of our mini adventures.

Lesson Learned from Teacher Zorv: Be Courageous

Imagine yourself inside a ball as big as this:

And imagine that ball rolling on the hill as high as this:

Sounds exciting right? But hey, I’ll tell you, it’s a different feeling when you are just imagining it than in the actual scene. The thought of you being tied up inside this ball while it is rolling in the hill would make you think twice to try it. But you wouldn’t know how it really feels when you don’t try it, so I tried it.

I screamed and yelled and shouted inside the zorv while my intestines and all of my internal organs were gone haywire. It was one of the greatest 30 seconds of my life. It was like a roller coaster ride except that I haven’t experienced a roller coaster yet. One second you’re up, then next second you’re down, and the transition between up and down were so unpredictable and that made this activity more exciting and fun.

Life basically is just like a zorv, it will bring you up, it will bring you down and it will make you crazy. Just hold your grip, enjoy the ride and be courageous. Once the ball starts rolling, you can’t just stop it unless it reached the final edge of the hill. We have no choice, we have to live this life, but we can always choose to become brave in facing it and have fun.

Lesson Learned from Teacher Waterball: Challenge Yourself

Who would say it’s impossible to walk on the surface of the water? With the waterball, you can crawl, jump, run or even roll:

This one is not as challenging as the zorv, even a kid can get inside this waterball and do stints on the water without drowning. What I like about this activity is that, you can do absolutely everything except standing.I tried it and I swear I really can’t stand inside the ball. Of course, you can’t just sit inside and stay, it’s better to move so you will feel the challenge. To make it more interesting and fun, we challenged ourselves to stand inside the ball. Guess what? Nobody made it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it so much that I was able to bring out the kid inside of me. I was a kid for 10 minutes and I liked it.

Well life sometimes is kind of boring. You know, when you do the same things everyday and going to the same places, you will feel like being disoriented. If you feel like this, challenge yourself. Try something new and extreme. Just like the waterball, if you want to experience the fun, get up and challenge yourself to stand. You wouldn’t know how much fun it is when things start to become wild and extreme.

Lesson Learned from Teacher Zipline: Take a Risk

A zipline with 310 meters long and a height I know can multiply you into pieces if you will get fall is something of a real challenge. This is not a game for those who have fear of heights.

I never backed out. I allowed myself to be tied up in a wire and slide over to get to the other end of the wire. At first, I was so scared to try it, it’s too risky up there. I don’t know how to fly, in case of worse comes to worst, I may end up dead. I rebuked negative thoughts, composed myself and decided to really try it out. I was a Superman in less than a minute. My hesitation was replaced by excitement when I was there flying while overlooking trees and mountains and buildings. So this is how superman feels when he is up there flying to save the world.

I never backed out. I allowed myself to be tied up in a wire and slide over to get to the other end of the wire. At first, I was so scared to try it, it’s too risky up there. I don’t know how to fly, in case of worse comes to worst, I may end up dead. I rebuked negative thoughts, composed myself and decided to really try it out. I was a Superman in less than a minute. My hesitation was replaced by excitement when I was there flying while overlooking trees and mountains and buildings. So this is how superman feels when he is up there flying to save the world.

This is an official entry to the The Learning Site’s Christmas Carnival.

Cindy Velasquez shares a personal life-changing story about mountaineering and teaching and the transcendent power of the now.

I always wanted to be a mountaineer. But I never had a chance until I said yes to an invitation by my closest friend, the backpacking poet Jona. It was way back 2009 when I joined the Freedom Climb held at Mt. Babag. Heading straight toward the mountain, I almost collapsed. Hot winds somehow robbed my lungful of air. Gathering my breath, collecting them like seashells while outlining a long shore. I could remember how unwelcoming the trail was.

When I saw the rippling orange beam scarfed with the gloomy red light, I was almost near the peak. A slow dance of charcoaled and pirouetted skies, I felt I visited this place perhaps in memory or imagination. It was like my very first handwriting when I was beginning to write my name. There were traces of happiness shadowed by some fear and tired feet. Yet, it travelled through the air like faint noises or the crickets’ inhospitable sound. Suddenly, the smell of the city had died.

After the climb, I found myself at the state of smallness. To be connected with the mountains, I was fascinated. It was an overwhelming weight of loveliness yet unarmored with the truth: I’m a dot in this universe. An audacious moment, comforting yet it was fleeting. Early morning, I couldn’t move even a single part of my lower body. Soon, all parts were someway paralyzed except my heartbeat. Reposeful with yesterday, I was so drained yet so alive knowing I was still on top of the city. Out of nowhere, I began to feel like a turtle’s heart: “It beats for minutes long after the turtle itself is dead.”

From then on, I simply looked at the mountain as my guide. It maps to my forgotten courage, locating a mixture of my peculiar guts and timing bravery. Though my body is somehow lifeless after every climb, all because of muscle pain, my heartbeat is enough. Surprisingly like a wizard’s effect, it leads me to my youngest mentor.

As a teacher myself, I always believe: one way to have a little transcendence is to simply seek learning without comparing with someone’s birth year. Teaching is an art that truly conceals age. Instead, it firmly anchors on friendship. Perhaps, it owns a vortex of an imagined time. Let just say that in teaching, age is simply an invisible thread, it may stretch or tangle, but never break. It bonds each one of us. No wonder I often think of teaching as a magical place. And in here, people do not age.

Just this year, I met an incredible friend but he is more like a manghod (a younger brother). He has this habit of doing good word-plays, a lover of siopao. He has a talented hand that can easily solve shape puzzles and has the most creative eyes especially when he gets a little drunk. He is four years younger than me. Yet when we are in the mountains, I change the way I look at him. I inhabit in my eyesight a mentor, embarking on him trust. This may seem bit pretentions, yet he is eminently older than me when we are in a labyrinth of a difficult trail. Or when he starts sharing his stories about the mountains, his narration is reckoning on how I value places aside from home. He has these stories that speak to me like the infinite spaces of the sea where it encompasses wonders and possibilities. Sometimes, it talks like an unknown geography that outstretches my little childhood fear. His stories have a form that I need to relearn. It takes me some time to decipher this situation. But I begin to grasp that I am becoming his student.

A confession: he taught me how to unite with the mountains, to truly confirm its existence, resting a fact that sometimes a man needs greater force than gravity. These are days when I feel younger than him by years.

It is through Edward that I learn to seek more information about mountaineering. I remember him saying: “Safety is knowledge.” I climb mountains for years, but it was just recently through his help and with our fellow-mountaineers that I entirely appreciate the value of the Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC).

Most of the people who know that I’m a mountaineer often ask this classic question: “Why do you climb?” To have less word to answer, I often replied: Makig-uban sa kinaiyahan (to be with nature), to be more earthbound. But giving this answer for the sake of answering it pollutes the peak’s worthiness. Listening to Edward’s stories, it narrates unmistakable signs of absence. Then it hits me. I finally realize why I become a mountaineer. The truth is: my answer is not anymore to be with nature, but to be with nature in that very particular instant. To feel the now of everything as if I have no expectations of what will happen tomorrow, enjoy the unifying force of the present, belonging with uncertainties while becoming one with nature. For not being yourself at this moment is the saddest. Perhaps this is the truest thing, the youngest mentor that I have taught me the oldest principle in the world: to fully appreciate the present.

Once again, out of nowhere, I feel like the turtle’s heart. Its dead in the past will not matter, not even its transformation as it decomposes in the future. The most important thing is my heart, its beating that marks the now.

This is an official entry to the The Learning Site’s Christmas Carnival. 

Jennyfer Tan has learned a lot of lessons from her 8-year son, Daniel. She believes that we all learn something from someone, even from the unexpected.

I thought I had it in the bag. Homeschooling a 6 year old boy. Easy! How hard can it be?

I was wrong.

My husband and I have been talking about homeschooling our son since he was in preschool. We’ve researched about it, prepared for it, bought the lesson plans, workbooks and textbooks. I’ll just follow the outline right? Make a schedule? Allot a spot in the house to be our “study nook”?

It didn’t turn out the way we planned it.

We started the Grade 1 curriculum in July 2010, a month late because we had to wait for the lesson plan that we ordered from the US to arrive. Since our preferred mode of homeschool is the eclectic way, we would follow the pace of our son, so I thought, oh, we’ll be able to catch up, he’s smart. We ended up finishing Grade 1 before the year was over. He breezed through the lessons and kept on asking for more. We spent the next 3 months scouring the internet for interactive things and higher grade worksheets for him to accommodate his thirst for knowledge.

The same thing happened when he was in Grade 2, but the difference was, the questions he was asking were way more than what I know. He was already curious about solar system facts that I couldn’t seem to remember. He spewed words that I didn’t recognize, he played and finished physics games that I couldn’t even comprehend. His science lessons consisted of parts of the heart and the moons of the other planets.

And slowly, we were at each other’s throat, butting heads, testing each other’s patience and threshold. I was frustrated at his stubbornness to listen to me, and at his insistence on just reading in his room and not going out to play with his peers (in our case, the neighbors’ kids). He was frustrated at my inability to answer his questions at the drop of a pin. He kept insisting on doing repetitive actions and finishing a whole book before putting it down. He would scream and throw tantrums and would break down and cry, until he was too exhausted to talk and will just sleep.

It’s been happening constantly that his pediatrician recommended I had him tested for IQ. She said that the frustration and the power struggles might be from boredom. We took her advice and had him tested. The doctor was right – he was bored, IQ was 6 years above his age, but that’s not all – he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

According to Wikipedia, Asperger Syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. Although most students with AS/HFA have the average mathematical ability and test slightly worse in mathematics than in general intelligence, some are gifted in mathematics.

We should have noticed it early on, we should have trusted our instinct. Maybe we were able to bring him to occupational and speech therapy earlier, maybe we could have sped up his social and emotional skills, maybe we could have saved him and ourselves the heartache.

But what’s past is past. This is the now that we are facing. I have accepted it and found that the knowledge of why he was the way he was, was actually a blessing in disguise. With the help of the Internet and the books that I have purchased and read, I slowly understand why he acts the way he does, why he thinks the way he thinks, why he feels the way he feels, and I sometimes cry and feel guilty.

The things that I considered as his “weaknesses” turn out to be his strengths. His inability to stay still or being hyper means he has the strong desire to seek new things to learn, to gain more knowledge. His obsession with using a particular word and editing his worksheets means he has great attention to details. His “catastrophic thinking” (e.g. “Why are you late in picking me up at school? I thought you were caught in a tsunami and died.”, “My tummy hurts, I think I was poisoned.”) means he sees things in a global scale. He never fails to donate to the Fallen Soldiers Fund whenever he gets the chance.

He is currently attending occupational and speech therapy and is enrolled at the school where is accepted and nurtured. He is still bored at times, and he always announces that his favorite part at school is quiz time because that means he’ll be learning new things instead of reviewing the old ones.

He would often tell me things like “Uluru was formed before the Mesozoic Era.” He once asked me if I remember what a “Sauropod” is. I answered, “Of course! It’s a dinosaur with a long neck!” He just stared at me, waiting for me to continue. With an exasperated sigh, he exclaimed, “You forgot again! It’s a dinosaur with a long neck AFTER the Triassic period!”

One time I saw a picture of a weird looking dinosaur, looked for its name and thought it was something he didn’t know. I went to his room, proudly told him, “Hey Daniel, did you know that there was a dinosaur that looked like an ostrich? The name was Gallimimus!”

He then replied, “What did it mimic?”

“Mimic? No, it looked like an ostrich!”

“But what did it mimic?”

“What do you mean mimic? How did you know that it mimicked something?!” He then looked up from the book that he was reading and just said “Because mimus is the Greek word for mimic.”

Instead of getting angry at him for not paying attention to what I say, I’d just sit down with him for a lecture on the different types of dinosaurs and what era they came from. I’d watch him solve physics puzzles and hear him squeal a delightful sound every time he gets a perfect 3 stars on it. I’d spend time with him in processing the emotions he cannot manage on his own. I’d learn from him on how to be patient, how not to see things in just one way, how each of us can learn something amazing from every person we meet.

How teaching cannot just be from teachers.

How teachers can also become the student, and the student becomes the teacher.

I still consider our family as a homeschooling family. But instead of me teaching my son school lessons, he is the one that is homeschooling me, both in academics and life in general.

This is an official entry to the The Learning Site’s Christmas Carnival. / Photo source