May 2013
4 posts
day three 2.0
kelly and i are starting to learn more about jayvoy’s quirks, abilities, and difficulties. today we started introducing the letters b/o, both of which he “already knew beforehand”, so it was all a matter of familiarization, and blending.
kelly devised a sort of pull-the-flap device that reveals a word letter-by-letter. i was expecting jayvoy to be bored with it after a while,...
day two 2.0
thus begins my adventure midway through the summer with a new student (jayvoy) and a new partner (kelly). i guess it’s nice to have a break from nathan (not that it was that difficult to handle thing, but i trust that edwin’s got everything in control).
since i still think it’s too early in our “teaching journey” to be tracking jayvoy’s progress, here’s...
day... one?
thursday saw a new slew of kids coming into the class, which completely destroyed the 1:2 and occasionally 1:1 student-teacher ratio. that meant i had to leave edwin and nathan behind (edwin clearly had a better grasp over nathan than i did) and ended up teaching this new kid named jayvoy. since i wasn’t prepared to teach alone at all, kelly joined me in teaching (since she and nox were...
day five.
remember what i said about a failure to see nathan’s progress? i guess that’s still going on now. today seemed just like a rehash of the last: we review yesterday’s lesson, play a couple of games (which nathan enjoys a lot), try to introduce a new letter or two (most of the time, a letter he already knows), play another game, stumble with blending, and run drills until we...
April 2013
4 posts
day four.
i missed out on last thursday’s session because of a camp i attended over the weekend, so when i got back to iclip on monday, i was completely lost— edwin was doing activities with nathan that i wasn’t able to keep track of: apparently edwin had decided to forego the lesson plans to focus on nathan’s individual needs. for example, edwin had begun separating words into...
day two
so edwin and i decided the level-up the activities a little bit (not like edwin’s preparations were as subpar as mine) but to be honest, time seemed to go by much faster (maybe because nathan was more invested this time around, i guess?). i’d like to give most, if not all credit to edwin’s teaching materials, which overshadowed mine by around a mile again.
today involved the...
day one
so, about first day of teaching: to be honest, i was expecting the worst, really, but i don’t think that motivated me enough to actually prepare for the worst. i decided to play it safe and stick as closely to the lesson plan as possible. i could already feel myself tripping over my words: like i said, the language barrier was a really big deal for me. how was i to teach someone how to...
March 2013
8 posts
bubbles (or, someone gets thrown off the fourth...
“how well you imagine / is how well you know” - gémino abad, discourse on language (2006) the thing is this has happened before, once or twice. exactly this, or a permutation of that simple process: dropping eggs and hoping that they don’t break, provided you know what you’re doing, or you’re able to...
basics (apologies to maslow)
(fig. 1) maslow’s hierarchy of needs morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts. self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect of others. friendship, family, sexual intimacy security of body, of employment, of resources, of the family, of health, of property breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion (fig. 2)...
motivation (or, the medal of childhood tarnishes...
I.
when i was in elementary school i was not the brightest star in our constellation of a class: yes, there were many things i was quite good at that were beyond the capacities of my classmates, but everyone was just so good at everything, and the system of the school made it a point to never make a student feel like he was not good enough. “do your best” my parents and teachers would...
absent (or, all play and no learn does not change...
february 18
i don’t know what exactly they did today, but i do know that today went beyond the rules of the classroom, because they told me that day was dedicated to learning through play. let this serve as a confession: i cut class, skipped LTS not because i was sick, not because there was a family emergency or i was not anywhere diliman at that time, but because i was cramming for...
transitions (or, i was pretty sure they taught me...
march 4th
teacher today works at upis, and is here to talk about mother-tongue -based early education, and i think shit, i don’t want to go all post- colonial on this, and then, right after, i hope she doesn’t go around asking people what their first language was, dear lord, i’m such an embarrassment. don’t get me wrong: i had okay grades in elementary for filipino, and...
iclip (or, the wandering summer negotiates a home)
march 11th
the first thing you notice is the smell. it’s a beautiful structure, really, contoured, an embrace meek around katipunan. there is a creek which smells terrible. but it isn’t deserted: there are kids who stare at us, as if they understand that we are here to learn as well. the place looks halfway decent. there are several monobloc chairs we have to carry in from the hallway...
pasaway (or, mishka is a kindergartener for...
march 18th
our teacher has a student who will serve as our teacher today: she’s teacher now, and we students are twice-removed students learning to teach and be teachers, but this time through being the students of a teacher, who is a student of our teacher (who, if you think about it, was a student sometime ago as well, and her teacher was a student, ad nauseam: the point is that everyone...
in which mishka tries (harder than he usually...
first off, if you’re reading this, and you’ve been checking this constantly until now, it’s probably obvious and you should know that i honestly didn’t put in much effort into doing this until now, yes, the last few weeks of school, in hopes that i retain/ed everything and am able to translate it into how i see fit. i don’t know.
goodness me, mishka, you might say....
December 2012
1 post
November 2012
1 post
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