Learning to be a teacher
I have been blessed with excellent teachers who initiated me well. Sr. Ghislaine Londot, ICM, a Belgian nun guided us in such subjects as Methods of Teaching, Observation and Participation, and Practice Teaching. She emphasized that teachers should not be careless with words. Whenever we misused words she asked us to write these on the board so all of us could reflect on them and eventually realize how the words could be misleading.
We were not surprised that reports submitted would be returned “bloody” with corrections. But we learned and the papers came back less and less “bloody”.
She insisted that we do things correctly but she was also very helpful. In Practice Teaching while I was presenting a class in Integrated Science, my minor, she suddenly left early in the lesson. When we met to discuss the class, she said she had gone to the library to search for experiments that would properly open a class on light energy. She handed the experiment to me, saying that in science the laboratory method is the main approach.
I have always been proud of the fact that Dr. Lourdes Reynes-Quisumbing was my teacher in the undergraduate level while she was handling graduate students in other schools. From the beginning she stressed: “There is no teaching if there is no learning.” Whether she was teaching education, sociology, or history she asked provocative questions; she kept our brain cells moving. She instilled in me the importance of higher level thinking skills.
In our most recent encounter she was sharing her song compositions that were to be used for peace education. She had a very inspiring multi-dimensional discussion. She maximized the use of current technology to enrich her presentation with beautiful, sensitively chosen images as well as her skillfully crafted songs. I was so thrilled to see my teacher in her late seventies enthusiastically, creatively advocating peace education. All these effectively communicated that we have to keep seeking fresh ways of teaching.
Still in St. Theresa’s College, Sr. Delia Coronel, ICM was my teacher in Philippine History. Although, we had Molina’s two-volume text, she assigned students to read other authors. She assigned the “mestizas” to “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas”. This exposure actually helped me in my interview as an applicant of UP. They asked how I would cope with different writers with conflicting positions. Like Dr. Quisumbing she had many uncommon questions. She was actually preventing learning the history of our country at a superficial level.
In our Types of Literature class, she motivated us to write a poem for every type of poetry. Through this she was able to select talented students who were to write poems on the year’s theme for the poetry social. The first year students bid the seniors goodbye through the poetry social. The budding poets read their poems as a tribute to the seniors. Each senior was gifted with complete set of the best poems of the first year class. The succeeding year we wrote essays in Rhetoric Class. It was on-the-spot essay writing in every class. Again she chose the best essays making them part of a collection. Here, she was also trying to select those who would qualify for her challenging Photo-Journalism class. She wanted us to use fountain pens and handkerchiefs made of cloth. Only later did I realize that she was trying to let us resist the “disposable” or being part of the “throw-away society”.
“Experience is the best teacher”; involvement in the nationalist struggle and participation in the Education Reform Program had a great deal to do with the improvement of my teaching. In the nationalist movement my teaching acquired depth and direction. Being in the movement involved a whole range of tasks: writing, training, raising funds, linking people and linking with people, working in theatre productions, getting a newspaper printed, joining mass actions, and many others. You discover skills you had been unaware of and then work to develop them. When it came to preparing syllabi, the work has been facilitated because of being emotionally and intellectually conscious of the content that needs to be emphasized as well as results among the students that you want to arrive at. There were many alternative teachers to learn from: the farmer, the worker; the young people – students as well as out-of-school youth.
I am very grateful to have learned from Prof. Eleonor Hermosa and the Education Reform Program. Through the experience I began to truly understand culturally appropriate, relevant education. Neneng brought us to Valencia, Negros Oriental, Dauis, Bohol, and Lopez-Jaena, Misamis Occidental. Since she believed in local trainers for the South, she requested for the senior faculty members in communication, mathematics, natural science, and social science of UP Cebu to join the training in Valencia. Here we observed the literacy-numeracy(lit-num) teaching of new entrants to the school system using the mother tongue and making the most of the materials in the surroundings to make the teaching very concrete and close to the learners’ lives. Using this approach, pupils learned to read in three months.
In Dauis, Bohol I understood more the importance of knowing the community where the teaching or training is to take place. Before, we arrived for the training the ERP staff had done a rapid assessment of the place and the trainees. So we came aware of the needs of the participants and how we could use the materials and the actual realities of the community for the training. Neneng Hermosa and Malu Doronila had the conviction that in order to be effective an educational reform program had to be integrated to a comprehensive community development program. Having participated in those trainings helped me to become a more authentic teacher of Socio-Cultural Foundation of Education, Social Institutions, and Selected Topics in Social Studies, and other courses of the UP Master of Education Program. The experiences made me always remind the graduate students that they are studying not just for the content and exciting new approaches, but also in order to play an active role in the needed transformation of education in our country.
