Memoirs of an Amnesiac

For the record I have been in school for almost 23 years now. Fourteen of those years were spent with me as a student and the other nine years, as a teacher (not counting those summers I spent as a student for my postgraduate studies). You could say I have learned what I could but really to be honest, I have not learned enough. For certainly, there is no limit to what the mind of man can achieve (even with all our learning, we are just using about 10 percent of our brains while the rest remains untapped). Besides, one never stops learning until he is six feet below the ground.

There is something about learning (which I haven't quite figured out) that really intrigues me. It could be the euphoria of knowing that my brain is really wired up and that I could use it more than the average person or the feeling that with the learning I got, I could use it to answer those random trivial questions in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? With all I'm learning, I thought it best to share them all. Like they say, learning, unlike money does not get all consumed up when shared. It even doubles in quantity as well as in quality. And so I tried my hand on what is considered to be the most noble way of sharing knowledge ---teaching.

My high school aptitude test didn't lead me to teaching. During that crossroad in my life, I had my heart set on taking either Mass Communication or Computer Engineering. But as luck would have it, my father made me choose between two options (like the devil and the deep blue sea): either I take Education or I don't pursue college. At that time, being an out-of-school youth was not cool (unlike now, when teenagers are even provided the gadget of their choice, just so they would enjoy being home, complete with allowance just in case they get bored and wanted to hang out). Robert Kiosaki was not born then so parents thought that the only way to get rich is to go to school, earn one's degree and get remuneration for what one has worked one's ass off in college. Even when I cried trying to argue with my father about not having to take it, I went through applying anyway. In fact, if one would dig up my file info from the university where I came from, it would contain a picture of me with my eyes puffy from too much crying.

What I thought to be simple knowledge sharing turned out to be something more difficult yet interesting. During practice teaching, they made us do all those things which they think average teachers go through. Lesson planning became a chore and visual aids making, a real torture. I memorized countless strategies (and forgot them all). But believe me, when you are already on the field, I bet you'll only remember the most important strategy (which ironically was not given that much emphasis): to use your common sense the most.

Teaching is really a serious job. Aside from learning all those lessons you need to teach students just so you'd be following the curriculum, you also need to go through serious psychological training to be able to assess students moods and temperaments (especially when one is teaching high school, where hormones rage like that of the Niagara Falls). Most of the time, one's patience is tested. I have learned over the years (with all my experiences) to just zone out each time a student plays coy to my discipline. I count from one to one hundred. If that still didn't work, I count backwards (sometimes I forget about my annoyance and anger since I lose track of the backward counting). At other times when this strategy doesn't work, I use my 1000 Richter-scale voice to bellow out my anger. If they get deaf with my shouting, at least it's not a serious offense than actually hitting them. There was no physical contact, so to say.

Then, the grades. My goodness, they hurt like a thousand acupuncture pins pricked at one's nape. And all students could ask is, "Teacher, did I pass?" They have no idea what great lengths we had to go through just to either contemplate on stretching them, letting them stay as is, or pulling them down. But my reflections go beyond the numbers. I see students and their parents behind them, parents whose hearts would either break in disappointment, or marvel in delight. Sometimes I need to weigh in too hard that I get affected each time. Times there were that I would cry, because I badly needed to teach a student a lesson on perseverance.

Then there is my personal life to deal with. Teaching is very exacting. I had to be wary of my actions and remember who I am even when I am outside school, hanging out with my friends.

Each day brings me new beginnings and a bucketful of inspiration (even when I had cried myself to sleep the previous night because I terribly missed someone). I could not afford to sport a frown in front of a class of hopeful students, waiting for me to dissect a poem for them (like the way they dissect frogs in Biology class). Life after all continues, even when mine had reached its hiatus.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, I keep reminding myself that no matter what difficulty I go through in teaching, it is after all the profession I chose, even when it is until now such an uphill climb.