My Blog

YES, TEACHING IS THE NOBLEST PROFESSION
(Published in Baguio Midland Courier Jan. 27, 2008 issue)

I used to be scared of getting sick lest I would miss the fun going out with my friends or simply watching the TV shows I religiously pursue.

Things changed when I started my student teaching practicum. This time, I am still scared of getting sick lest my students would miss the inimitable lessons I have for them.

Notwithstanding the lack of English textbooks and staggering number of students in a classroom, I aim to make most if not all of my fourth year students better than average Filipino fourth year students in terms of English proficiency. I only have more or less a month to accomplish that. It sounds megalomaniac.

But even if a thing is megalomaniac, if it is not impossible and it is not against the law, could it be in any way wrong?

As an alumnus of the prestigious Baguio City National High School, I am putting more enthusiasm in my practice teaching at my alma mater. I confess though, that the plans I laid at first were all for compliance’s sake.

Things do change (and I am glad they spontaneously do for the better). I don’t care much about my grade for my final subject in college (of course, at least a passing grade would satisfy me). My eyes are set not on my training as a future professional teacher per se but on our symbiotic metamorphosis. My students will help me become a better teacher and vice versa.

I was blessed with indispensable experiences, trainings, and wisdom at Benguet State University. Subsequently, I was blessed with one of the best mentors I’ve ever known as my critic teacher along with the promising graduating students at City High. But having spent almost two months with my students, I feel stupid and selfish that I haven’t given yet more than half of what I can do with my teaching, or shall I say, I haven’t really taught yet.

Last 2005 and 2007, I was qualified for the International Student Week in Ilmenau, a biennial international student conference in Germany. Despite financial shortage, I should have made it only if I wasn’t stupefied by my puerile pursuits then. Time mismanagement and wrong priorities were the culprits.

Thinking I should have done better or haven’t done such a thing has been my personal cliché. But past is past. I came to forgive myself. Unless we forgive ourselves, we cannot forgive others and we will be haunted by the shadows of our own ghosts.

I don’t want any one of my students to do the same mistake in life and miss opportunities when they go to college. I once told my students that being intelligent is different from being wise. More than making my students intelligently use conjunctions, prepositions, idioms, eschewing dangling modifiers, I shall make them wisely live life. With that, I want to prod them to come out of their cocoons, and metamorphose as useful butterflies for the pollination of the Philippines.

I shall not depart from my students at City High without my mission accomplished with a megalomaniac smile.