Memoirs of an Amnesiac

In the spirit of Valentine's Day (that for so long I haven't celebrated), I will let you in on a set of guidelines that I have compiled based on experiences I gathered from friends, from people I look up to and my very own experiences. Now, these experiences are self-adhesive that they would seem to glide on their own that you would find it difficult to distinguish mine from the others. I don't think it would matter to you, anyway.

So here goes my top ten list.

1. They said that it is difficult for teachers to get married. Yes. Why? You might ask. One, they are so caught up with their own idealism that sometimes most of them reach the point where they are caught up with their biology clocks, and are often beset with problems on settling. As jokes would have it, they would either end up with habal-habal drivers, who constantly become their suki in the far-flung areas where they will be assigned. With the constant riding and getting close physically, who wouldn't get developed as the rural winds assail them to their schools? Or they will end up with their fellow teachers, who have the same wavelength as they have.

2. Teachers are adept at assessing someone. Well, they wouldn't be in their professions if they were not custom-made to accomplish this. By just a question, teachers know just when someone is lying, making alibis, and bored. But these don't prove to be a guarantee though. I've known of far too many teachers who are trapped in their own assessments. So, don't take my word for it.

3. Evaluation is a teacher's thing. True - pre-diagnostic, formative, summative. Teachers love giving tests. When you eventually fall with a teacher, she/he will make you go through tests that you would feel what Sir Galahad in his search for the Holy Grail felt. The test can be in multiple choice, identification, true-false, and mostly essay but never matching type. Rest assured that when you emerge out of his/her tests, you'll be as invincible as Hulk Hogan.

4. Teachers go by schedules. This is probably borne out of the structures in the school system, being that teachers are mostly trained to obey and follow the bell. So, you can't ask a teacher to have a date with you at midnight. Chances are, he/she would most likely decline because he/she has work the next day. If you are the type who is also bound by structures and systems, then go for that teacher in uniform waiting for her/his bus to pick her/him up.

5. Teachers are compassionate. True and false. Not all though. There are reported incidents of teachers who have made mistakes on their students as when they let them eat paper to the worst thing imaginable as exploiting them sexually. However, the real teachers that I know of who clearly epitomizes the teaching profession are the most compassionate of their kind that you can imagine them having Mother Theresa genes embedded in their DNAs.

6. Teachers are loyal. Again. This depends. There are also those I know who like to play games. They are a disgust to the teaching profession but what can one say. While it is true that teachers should be role models, it is also humane for teachers to treat each other for individual differences.

7. Teachers love attention. Mostly true. I myself revel in attention, only when I wanted my class to hear me out during discussions as to not fall asleep nor do something hanky-panky as answering their home works in school during my period. I'd hit the ceiling when this happens. So yeah, go ahead shower her/him with attention. She/he would most likely revel in it.

8. Teachers are flexible. True, and they are also good with time management. What with the amount of work they need to juggle each day--students' academic and behavioral problems in the classrooms (sometimes extending to their problems brought from home to the school) to parents' complaints down to the administrators pressing demands, teachers are able to breeze through them as if they were just a walk in the park. Are you having doubts whether he/she could be wife or husband material? Think again.

9. Teachers will bring you up at your worst. True and half true. There are also those who don't do this. They are what I call hopelessly trapped in the teaching profession. Real teachers bring out the best in you. It would be a shame that a student didn't improve at the end of a school year. Teachers transform lives. They are the best at providing molar (I mean moral) support.

10. It all boils down to experience. Look at what a teacher has accomplished, her/his track record, it will say so much about the kind of teacher he/she is. Just because somebody has had been conferred a teacher's license, that doesn't mean that that teacher is cut and dried for teaching. You still have to look into individual differences, idiosyncrasies that you will have to take into account whether they will fare in the kind of relationship you will start.

These could get to be partial. I don't claim to be an expert, just an outsider looking in. So, are you ready? Pencils up!