Memoirs of an Amnesiac

Next year, I will be celebrating ten years (that's one decade) of my teaching career. I know I don't measure up to most teachers who have spent more years than I did. I'm also fully aware that there are still many chalkboards I need to erase, more test papers that require my red marks, more compositions that need dissecting, more parents to talk to about their children's problems or achievements, more competitions to win or lose, more crying nights trying to figure out what it takes to be a better teacher and what went wrong with students who lost their motivation and more nights like this, looking back and smiling after have done all those.

I am a neophyte. If I were in a hospital, I would have been adjudged as the newbie intern. My experiences are proselyte. I'm taking baby steps and I'm partly crawling.

Practice makes perfect they say. But in teaching, I daresay, practice makes permanent. I teach the same subjects each year but I try not to bore my students (even myself) with what I teach. Same selections, same lessons. But I try to come up with different approaches and strategies. I get fired up with different strategies. I try to put myself in the shoes of my students. Would their 40-minute period with me be so worth my wasting my saliva? I always teach the concept of "What's in it for me?"

Learning is what is remembered when everything else is forgotten. What do I seriously want my students to learn (and remember for that matter)? Will distinguishing the subject from the predicate make so much sense when their employers would want them to write an indisposed letter to the CEO while they're basking in the beaches of Boracay? I better teach integrity then subject and predicate would come in.

Teaching is a serious job. How serious? Recently I went to court for it. I didn't get to sit in the witness stand. But I did get a seat in the audience and felt like the witness (being that I was part of the process). While seated, I have come to realize that some parents are slowly letting go of their responsibilities (as teachers at home) to the teachers and it's easy to blame the teachers for their children's failures. There I was reduced into a machine, "heartless and incapable of any form of empathy." For someone who so long ago is convinced that one's grades will never define one's character, this is a definite blow to one's gut.

I stay fair. The student puts in effort, I give the right incentive. If there's no effort, there is no way I would mark anything. Yet sometimes there are difficult decisions to make, tough choices to stay anchored on. All because students need to learn a lesson on hard work. It's like science somehow. You put force, there is work. No force, no work.

I never graduated with honors in college. I was a regular student, happy to be out of the competition in the academic world. If there's one thing I learned about achieving it is that achievements don't come through medals and what-not certificates, they come in the nine-letter-word called CHARACTER. It doesn't matter what grades my students get. It matters that they develop good character.

The challenges a teacher faces these days are tough to hurdle. There are absentee parents, messed up education system, and narcissistic technology. But I know I'll get by.

Yes, difficult world. Bring on the grime...