learning by doing by learning

the last day

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:51:51 +0800

i should be happy, i really should.

i should feel both relief that the summer semester is over, and i should feel pride for the progress of my kid/s (if you count nathan).

but i can’t. not really. i want to be okay with this, but i’m not. looking back, all i seemed to do in this class was glorified ukulele-playing and the occasional cut-and-paste visual aide game. even if my kids didn’t show up much, or even if they weren’t so receptive for the first few days, should that have been an excuse for my subpar performance as a teacher at iclip? i can’t say i didn’t try, of course, but if you think about it, did i try my absolute hardest? what frustrates me is that all of this ended so soon. i wasn’t looking forward to preparing all those lesson plans and materials, but you know what i was excited about?

seeing a child read on their own. because i was able to help them help themselves. i could have seen that. my classmates did, with their kids. with all external factors aside, all those things i couldn’t control, could i say i really worked to get my way to that goal i had?

slow progress is still progress. i just wish it could have been more evident in both my work and his. but i hope he’s happy, kahit papano. i hope those words on that certificate/token are something he can make his own. i can’t get him there, to that goal of finally conquering reading after years of being held back. only he can get himself there.

i don’t know if he’ll look back, once he’s fully capable of literacy, and contemplate how he pushed himself to get there. but i hope, if he does, that he remembers that i helped myself help himself.

until next time, kid.

another day zero

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:42:55 +0800

given the recent string of absences of jayvoy, kelly and i honestly did not prepare anything anymore, with the pessimism of his failure to attend class starting to get to kelly and me. instead, we spent the afternoon at kelly’s dorm (with the teachers’ permission, of course) to fix materials for the culminating activity the next day. this included sock puppets, syllable cards mounted on sticks, and a massive syllable mat for the kids to play twister on. it sounded simple enough, with four of us (nox and almira, too, were childless that day) working on such mundane teaching materials.

dead wrong. it took us the whole afternoon, and by the time it was around dinnertime with just kelly and i at the dorm, even the puppets weren’t half-done yet. for such simple props and visual aides, there are apparently a lot of things to take into consideration when using them to both teach and entertain kids, especially those ones in iclip. it’s like you have to go through some troubleshooting and childproofing. if there’s anything really important i learned at LTS, it’s that you have to handle everything with care. not only the child him/herself, or the lesson plan, but even the materials that you use only as secondary supplements to your teaching.

for example, spacing the letters on the twister mat was not easy. we had to make sure each word would be able to be formed on the mat without injuring the children. we also had to make sure that the mat looked complicated, with no two syllables or colors appearing near each other. we had to make the gameplay simple, but still engaging. like i said, there are so many factors to take into consideration even when you’re just creating a simple floormat!

this got me thinking about all the effort i put into preparing for this class, which, honestly, was not much. so does jayvoy’s frequent absence justify that? well, i don’t think it should. whether or not the child exerts 100% in coming to class, being participative and receptive, and basically learning, it requires almost 200% on your part to compensate for whatever lack or complication that comes your way. which is what frustrates me, since i know i can always shape up and start putting my back into it a little bit more. the catch was we didn’t have much or any time left at all.

day zero. again.

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:25:58 +0800

jayvoy didn’t show again, for some reason. to be honest, kelly and were starting to get pessimistic about his attendance and motivation, and if keeping on with him would be worth it (provided that he actually attended). so, like the previous class, day two of being student-less was spent drifting from table to table, trying to see how we could help the other teams, or at least observe what they were doing, in hopes that we could apply it to our own teaching style (that is, again, if our student actually showed up).

since edward was late, i ended up “babysitting” his kid niño, one of the more “notorious” and rowdy kids of our class. i’m not sure if it was the chance to tackle someone new (even just temporarily) or the opportunity to finally use the materials i prepared for jayvoy a week ago. so there, i ended up playing the toilet paper roll game with niño, who was relatively ahead of jayvoy (who wasn’t?) so the game coverage in relation to the syllabus wasn’t much of an issue. niño was also ridiculously behaved (so behaved, it seemed unnatural) since teacher hazelle had brought over a couple of students to observe us teaching.

what is it with the notion of unfamiliarity and comfort? save for (as expected) jerome, the whole class was oddly silent because of the twenty or so pairs of eyes that crowded over us and observed how we taught our students. everyone was suddenly so behaved and cooperated with my co-teachers. i realize the same thing was the case of the first few days of our teaching, with the kids being really shy and participative, only to become a tad “too comfortable”, and eventually defiant in the coming days.

how does one maintain a level of professionalism in the classroom, especially when you’re dealing with kids who probably don’t understand the notion of professionalism yet? of course, as a teacher of the very young, one must try to connect as interpersonally as possible to their student, but where do you draw the line and become both a “helping friend” to a “kuya”, or even, to demand more respect and authority, a bona fide “teacher”? it’s all just a matter of how comfortable you are with each other, right?

i’ll never know, really. not unless my kid shows up.

day four 2.0

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:13:16 +0800

strangely, jayvoy was unable to show up to class today, so kelly and i were left to just observe the other students and see their progress with our fellow LTS classmates.

obviously, i took this opportunity to check back on my old teammate, edwin, and our kid nathan. while edwin noted that he was having much more difficulty controlling nathan now that they were getting more comfortable with each other, it was quite evident how far nathan and edwin had come. when i was last with them, they were struggling with the letter o, and nathan kept guessing the answers in order to get everything over with (which slowed down the whole process). now they were at letters like t and k, and nathan was practically sight-reading everything. i was amazed. edwin was never one to do a job half-assed, and it was quite clear when it came to how nathan was progressing.

i was able to check on my other classmates, too. christian had managed to finally keep his two boys seated for long periods of time, and harnessed the competitiveness to motivate each other to learn more. almira was already almost crying while she got claress to read an entire sentence on her own. it was amazing how much progress becomes evindent to you all of a sudden.

however, this kind of put things into perspective for me, which made me feel very bad. where was my kid? why wasn’t i making any progress myself, both as a student of LTS and as a volunteer teacher? i know a lot of the factors were out of my control (i.e. jayvoy’s attendance) but it still made me feel terrible, as if i had been accomplishing nothing the whole time, as if my frustration with the lack of progress for the last few days was entirely my fault. how come nathan and edwin were making so much leaps and bounds without me?

i don’t know. i don’t know what to feel. i don’t know where to go from here.

day three 2.0

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:07:00 +0800

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, but he seemed to go on with the activity. however, it becomes more and more obvious that jayvoy, like nathan, “guesses to get the activity over with”. he assumes a word/sound based on a single letter he recognizes, and goes with it. this is really frustrating, because when he actually does try to read a word letter by letter and really makes the effort to decode it, he actually gets it, and in faster time than when he does guess and we keep telling him he’s wrong. i wonder how kelly and i will get to point this out to him and show him that he doesn’t have to guess in order the get the activity over with quickly.

the same thing went for kelly’s worksheets. kelly prepared worksheets that require minimal blending, basically a “fill in the blanks” wherein jayvoy has to provide the first syllable for basic words. while he recognizes the words and it’s clear that he has the ability to write them down properly, he still guesses (and more often than not, incorrectly).

today’s silver lining came in the form of an activity i developed for his mastery of recognizing syllables. i wrote some beginning syllables on some toilet paper rolls, and showed him pictures on my phone. he was then to identify the picture, then shoot down (with a rubber band) the correct roll. turns out that he had a difficult time shooting the band (but was very enthusiastic about it!), so the class ended without us being able to finish the game. i told him to practice with the rubber band (and with kelly’s worksheet), so that we could continue the game on thursday. i hope that motivated him to be more emotionally invested not only in the game, but in the act of learning itself. without him really knowing it.

day two 2.0

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:48:42 +0800

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 a few things kelly and i picked up about him:

he can still be easily distracted. if something more interesting than our activity is going on at another table, he won’t hesitate to move there. he also has a difficult time sitting still for long periods of time, or can’t remain in a single position for a while (i.e. puts his feet on the table, leans back, etc). i think the key to dealing with this is to get him to do activities that involve moving around more.
he enjoys drawing (and does so during “dead air” moments), so kelly and i tell him to “label” his drawings, especially if they begin with the letters we teach him.
when it comes to writing, he has some difficulty fully recognizing letters (for example, /a/ and /u/ look similar to him, or he once identified /b/ as /p/). i’m no expert and can’t say this is a sign of dyslexia or anything, so i guess it’s all just a matter of clarifying it to him (and helping him practice writing). he has to be told to write within lines.
when it comes to reading, it doesn’t seem like he gets “bored” with it easily. however, he has a tendency to guess a lot. for some reason, he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t know the answer after some periods of time (even though kelly and i tell him that he can, at any time, admit he’s wrong or doesn’t know the answer, and that she and i can help him).
he also likes “reading” books, or at least looking at them, and asking kelly to read the english for him and translate it into filipino. i wonder if we have any basic phonics books in filipino at iclip. that should be able to help, but the majority of “easy reading” books at the center are in english.

day... one?

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:33:03 +0800

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 handling one kid for the both of them, too).

i didn’t have any materials for “going back to day one”. i didn’t even have any way of making some kind of diagnostic test so i’d know where we’d start from. teach said that jayvoy was able to decode at least /M/ /S/ /I/ and /A/, so kelly and i did some game wherein he had to sort out pictures by their opening sound, and one where he had to color a card by letter. we also tested how good he was using the tachistioscope, and, unlike nathan, he did not guess as he went along. yes, he was much slower than nathan, but i guess it was a nice change to have someone take everything step-by-step instead of guessing everything.

kelly says she’s leaving me for a new student come monday, and while i’m pretty optimistic about starting anew in terms of progress, i’m still really scared about teaching on my own. i’m scared of the fact that i don’t know where we’re starting from, and that even now, as i type this, i have nothing for jayvoy. sure, i can reuse my old materials that were used by nathan, but then what? nathan and jayvoy aren’t the same person. they behave differently, have the same interests, but most importantly, they are not coming from the same startoff point and do not have the same mental capacity/facility of the other.

i guess i’m just going to ‘wing it’, at least for the next few days. take the time to gauge jayvoy and where we can start from and with. i’ll look really dumb and unprepared, and might even seem a little too boring to jayvoy right now, but i guess it’s the right thing to do. i hope kelly sticks around: i really can’t do this by myself. i can’t merge with edwin either since nathan and jayvoy aren’t on the same level. i don’t know where this is going. i don’t know where i’m going. but most importantly, i don’t know where jayvoy’s going, and that scares me.

i’m really unprepared. being with nathan never really made me into a control freak and instead molded me into just doing things spontaneously as we went a long as to not constrict him, but now that i’m with jayvoy, starting out from a still indefinite point, i’m really scared.

day five.

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:57:39 +0800

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 find out that it’s dismissal already.

it’s starting to get discouraging, i guess. when the next day seems just like the last, and you know what to expect and the kid doesn’t surprise you with improvement anymore, it becomes really difficult to invest one’s self into the whole act of teaching nathan. i mean, we’ve gone through all this before: what’s your motivation? can’t you see how much nathan needs this?

it’s not like he’s starting from zero. for the last few sessions it’s been evident that he’s already got some knowledge in: he can recognize a large portion of the alphabet and match them with their sounds, and can write his name. he can distinguish between uppercase and lowercase. if you think about it, we’re not starting from scratch. he isn’t the “perfect preschool student”, but he’s relatively more behaved and receptive than others. but then again, there’s the fact that he’s stuck there, and he’s already seven. and wow, that depresses me even more.

i don’t know what this calls for. a change in perspective, perhaps? it’s getting more and more difficult to gauge his improvement if nothing seems to be showing.

on the other hand, i’m continually amazed by edwin’s dedication to teaching nathan. he’s come up with so many ways to catch nathan’s interest (see the above picture, where he made an angry birds game to help nathan with blending). but hard work and all, i can see that edwin’s also getting frustrated with the fact that we seem to be getting nowhere, that we started out with nathan already having some stock knowledge that was easy to bank on, but was never added to or improved.

edwin and i have completely deviated from the lesson plan. i’m not sure where that’s going to get the three of us, but i sure do home we move somewhere soon.

day four.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:19:32 +0800

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 syllables since nathan had so much trouble blending sounds even though he could easily identify, pronounce, and write them. he accomplished this by capturing nathan’s attention in the easiest way possible: through play. edwin constructed a sort-of fishing game that made nathan pick up syllables one by one with a fishing rod and read them, then making nathan put them together and read them to “serve” to paper figurines.

one thing i noticed about this activity that while nathan readily read each syllable correctly, when it came to putting them together, he’d still “guess out of convenience”, and approximate the sound to the word we asked for. this has been a bit of my frustration since i kept wondering (to no avail) how we’d get nathan to stop guessing “para matapos lang” since it was clear that he had the ability to execute the activities properly and correctly. it didn’t seem to be a lack of interest in the activity since he seemed very engrossed in it. perhaps it was because he didn’t feel the need to guess properly or correctly. it was difficult for him to want to play the game out of a want to learn instead of a want to simply accomplish the game.

right now, with our departure from the syllabus, edwin and i are trying to find new ways for nathan to both be interested not only in playing the game but learning from it. it’s difficult, integrating a lesson into a game without it being too obvious, but still making it evident in the gameplay that there is a lesson to be learned and taken home.

even now, edwin and i are beginning to encounter difficulties in sustaining his interest: what he is interested in doing for, say, two days, is completely new the next. perhaps then it’s not an issue of continually giving him what he wants but presenting him with variety. while other kids seem to like routine, nathan appears to be interested in continually new things: while he does prefer some types of games over others, he still easily loses interest in them.

to be honest, i’m not really feeling nathan’s progress. at the very beginning of the class, diagnostics show that he already had the capability to read, write, pronounce, and identify at least half of the alphabet. however, he seems stuck in that level of “advancement”. it’s a difficult process, and we’re working on how to move on from here. together.

day two

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:45:30 +0800

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 addition of the letter /s/, which nathan seemed to be familiar with as well. again, he was able (and eager) to sort out objects by their first sound (and retained a few new names we either taught him or corrected him with the day before, such as “araw” and “abaniko”). he also easily recognized, pronounced, and wrote the letters /m/ /a/ /s/ and /i/. however, when it came to blending these sounds to make words, it seemed that he either 1) had difficulty doing so, or 2) guessed out of convenience to get the activity over with. he’d be able to read in segments/syllables, but then “am” would become “mam” or “mama”, and it was quite clear that he was just guessing.

i wonder why this was the case. were the activities not interesting enough? nathan stated explicitly that he was tired of using the tachistioscope (after only one day!), which really took edwin and me by surprise. i guess one really has to keep tabs on the interest (specific!) of each child and bank on it. which got me thinking: this is already taking the combined effort of edwin and i on a single child! how much more lack of attention are other kids getting in schools around the world? i know it’s far-fetched from the matter at hand, but that really bothered me.

anyway, edwin and i are starting to pick up and tune ourselves to nathan’s paces and interests: for example, we noticed he likes stories, and coloring, and can already write and read letters. he likes “doing new things” and not recalling something that’s previously been done. now we have to work around that and tweak the lesson plans to get things across. it’s a lot like parenting, isn’t it?

i don’t think my heart’s in the right place when i...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:59:46 +0800

i don’t think my heart’s in the right place when i say that i’m waiting for the child’s progress to serve as payoff and motivation to work harder on these materials. i hope i get that attitude checked soon.

(edwin, on the other hand, is really impressive. i don’t want to blame it on him being an educ major, but yeah. i wish i put as much heart into my learning materials as he does.)

day one

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:56:09 +0800

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 read in a language i have great difficulty with? i saw the kids starting to go fill up the other classroom, then i got really scared. earlier i’d mentioned that maybe enthusiasm would make up for my shortcomings, but somehow in that moment, everything seemed to get thrown out the window. suddenly i felt like, regardless of the visual aides in my folder or the lesson plan tucked under my arm, i was unprepared.

to my relief, we didn’t have a 1-is-to-1 ratio of students and volunteers, so edwin and i were able to team-teach this kid named nathaniel navarro. now, after running a sort of informal diagnostic, it was quite obvious that this to-be-2nd-grader had at least a basic grasp (better than i expected!) of literacy: he was able to write his own name, and identify the first three letters we presented him (namely M, S, and A). he was able to distinguish their sounds from one another and sort out words/objects by the sounds they started with.

the complications started kicking in when it came to naming objects. for nathan, “sorbetes” was “ice cream”, “araw” was “sun” or “sunday”, “apoy” was “sunog”, and so on. he also had difficulty differentiating counting in english and counting in filipino. i guess it never occurred to him (or to the people he learned to speak from) that these two were different languages altogether. come to think of it, taglish is very prevalent in everyday communication. one is more able to distinguish it from english than from filipino since it is basically the filipino syntax with english loanwords. and for nathaniel, there probably wasn’t any distinction between any of these languages.

while i really wanted just to focus on our kid, i found myself gauging his progress in relation to the others’. while as-is, i found nathan rather impatient, always reaching out to try other materials or activities before we’d finish with the one at hand. however, compared to, say, others who were constantly getting out of their seat or “answering back” to their volunteers, nathan seemed pretty tame. i know it’s not right to compare him to others, but maybe for that moment i just wanted to gauge the peformance/potential of me and edwin with nathan, and not nathan himself.

i don’t know where this will lead to, if he gets more comfortable (and therefore unmotivated), or less (which may make him close himself off completely), or if edwin and i will be able to catch up with him. i do hope it’s the latter.

and i do hope that we get to stick with this kid (and not split up, because i’d die on my own, i feel it)

bubbles (or, someone gets thrown off the fourth floor of benitez)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:47:44 +0800

“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 pin-point problems, and
know from experience
            how to remedy these.
but the thing is
            this has happened before, once or twice.

“how well you know / is how well you imagine”
            - gémino abad, discourse on language (2006)

our friend from eng’g
            says two things: cushioning, and shock absorption.
bubble wrap,
            for cushioning: there are yards of it at home.
cardboard rolls
            for shock absorption: that anyone has in abundance.
and down it goes,
            our egg, down the floors of the educ building.
it survives, and we
            realize: what you know in preparation is just
as good as what
            you learn right after the fall.

basics (apologies to maslow)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:46:25 +0800

(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) mishka ligot’s hierarchy of needs

good grades | good books
parental affirmation | peers
shelter | pamasahe | milk tea | pants
sleep | food | homeostasis | sex | excretion | spiritual backbone

(fig. 3) mishka ligot’s revised hierarchy of needs

sleep

motivation (or, the medal of childhood tarnishes with time)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:43:10 +0800

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 say to me. to us. and suddenly
we felt the impersonality of the idea
of a personal best. but then, this

pushed me to be better than others
already were; and to surpass what
i knew i could already do. i became
grade-conscious, knowing that since
everyone was special already, you
had to be a notch above that to actually
matter. so i slaved over science projects,
book reports. i’d think of how my friends
would carry out the work first, then cancel
that out— think of a way to do it that
nobody else had done before. the thing
with being in a school with such an encouraging
environment is that when everybody
is special, nobody is: imagine how
my heart sank when i was number
eleven in our graduation’s top ten.

II.

in high school i was surrounded
by all sorts of people: philippine science
hopefuls and makiling rejects, a handful
of kids from small places in the area. there
were ridiculous overachievers who never
took the time to sleep, and there were
those who wouldn’t even ask permission
before copying your homework. here
i realized that not every student was
created equal: there were lines
you could draw in between slacker
and burnout, control freak and naturally
gifted. and so i tried my best to stick
to my own notch, so to speak: i would
not stoop as low as those sleeping
through the semester: i would be
one of those who would not sleep
at all. school was a piece of cake:
burnt at the edges and still wet
on the inside: but food nonetheless.

it did not help that midway through,
all the quote-unquote smart kids
realized that the school was a trap:
no actual motivation to go above a
standard. if you were the best, that was
it. your ninety-five would be the perfect
score and everyone else would just
be subjected to your achievements.
and so they started dropping out,
the smart ones, one by one: half
the class. looking for greener pastures
where they could put their stronger
teeth to good use, grazing. my
parents wanted me to stay. i did not.

and so, third and fourth years were
a blur: a coma, to say, in which i’d
simply be drifting around, suddenly the
successor of the line of academic
excellence left behind by the brighter
ones. and those who replaced them, those
who stayed: oh, god, no. kick-outs from
st. paul and delinquents from la salle.
and suddenly, i was leader-elect of
everything, not because i wanted to
be the best, but in fear that everyone
else would drag me down along with
them: the rise to power, to the top of
the class was a sleepwalk. i lost the
concept of “doing my best” because
the idea of “good enough” was anything
above the indifference and lack of
effort my classmates were exerting. and
that, my friends, is how you become
class valedictorian: align yourself
with the ethics and standards of “good
students”, then kick them all out,
surround yourself with the sickly.
“best in class” becomes an empty
title: not because you tried, but
because nobody else bothered to.

III.

now i am not surprised that i do
term papers not two days in advance,
not the night before, but hours before
the deadline: my senses have been
too dulled for college, where you are
just a number, but everyone else is just
as smart– or smarter— than you.

IV.

maybe in a job interview one day, they’ll
ask me: “mister ligot, what motivates
you?” oh dear lord, i’d hope they’d’ve asked
that trap of a question in the past tense.

absent (or, all play and no learn does not change mishka at all)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:56:39 +0800

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
comparative literature 122, a
major: critical approaches
to literary theory two. it’s

basically a class where you
learn to take texts apart in
varied ways: essentially, my
major in a nutshell. sounds
a lot like a game, really. “to
take apart in order to under-
stand”, that is what we do
when we play to learn. but
the class feels nothing like

play, with my ancient professor
and her heavy, heavy readings
which require days and days
of studying (and overlapping
days wherein you’re supposed
to be at educ, in a class where
you learn to play to learn). it
feels like work, which is what
burdens students and shuts
their minds off to the dynamic

action of learning. again it
is not play. and it makes me
wonder, really, how old must
one stop taking things the fun
way and just put their big boy
pants on and learn to work
and learn through work,

but if we never stop learning
all our lives, doesn’t that mean
we never should stop playing?

transitions (or, i was pretty sure they taught me filipino in preschool, and at home, it's just that i don't remember)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:36:42 +0800

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 yes,
i did not bring myself to read the
english translation of Noli and El Fili
during high school, no. but i still
blush on the ears and below the
collar when people are surprised
that i do not know what “this word
means” or when i cannot pronounce
na KA ka PAG pa ba GA bag
as quickly as they can.
nakakapagpabagabag nga.

i don’t want to blame anyone.

nanay grew up speaking filipino
though now i only hear her speak
that when she’s upset. tatay in turn
grew up in JASMS in the 70s, and went
to the most protestant church
known to the north qc resident, when
people were still getting over uh-merica,
and now it seems so strange for him
to let pare or some other small thing
like that slip out in conversation. i grew up
watching both sesame street and
batibot. i knew anglo nursery rhymes
and tagalog and kapampangan folk
songs. but only english stuck, not
surprising for a child reared in
english by two people who insisted
i call them nanay and tatay.

but now the mother tongue is one that lies
dormant in between what i want people to see:
my teeth: all hard and even and white

iclip (or, the wandering summer negotiates a home)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:16:03 +0800

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
        (all cramped up in a corner,
        space is such a puzzle)
and we make our little
spaces in that little space:

teacher tells us i-clip
was learning links and
learning links was an answer
and that answer had a question
which asked,
        how are we going to
        get these katipunan kids
        (no, not neans, not knollers)
        to get back into shape?
by “shape” she means “form
minds to, at the very least,
learn to read, understand
what THIS is, and how THIS
is different from THAT, how THEY
(and THIS and THAT) have
THe /TH/ THound”

teacher says they need
all the help they can get
that everything in their
possession is a form
of donation, and volunteering
is service, whether you’re
in it to get a PASS on your
LTS grade or not. that isn’t
the issue here: what is
important, really, is that

the next time you show
up, the first thing on
your mind is the idea
of selflessness
    (teaching is one thing
    but doing it for free
    with what some people
    dare to call troubled
    youth is an entirely
    different deal altogether)

and that when you leave
you don’t notice
the smell.

pasaway (or, mishka is a kindergartener for another day)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:01:29 +0800

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 was a student once, everyone
was a kindergartener once, all snot in the nose
and just pasawáy, all energetic little zaps of
potential, future teachers (or mothers and fathers
[teachers, too]
or priests and pastors
[teachers, too]
or superiors in their workplaces, researchers
and bankers, writers and lawyers, doctors
of the mind and doctors of the body
[all teachers, every single one of them]
a thief or two [including the future mayor])
in which all existence is learned in the future
tense.

student/teacher/student’s got all sorts
of things with her: things that must have taken
ages to prepare, to put together, and here
i am, four again, shorts and high socks and
a terrible haircut, channeling who i was back
then in a tiny schoolhouse in cubao, some
smart-alecky little shit who read a lot, and had the worst
answers to the best questions. and so there’s me
exaggerating the misbehaving student role,
answering philosophical crap on the graphic
organizers, pulling hair and pretending not to
do work. then i realize: we are being prepared
for our tasks in the future, and we are to be
the objects (no, recipients) of our labor.
student/teacher/student’s real good, deflecting
the sarcastic little answers i spew out (she must)
have been trained real well). and i wonder if
i were to teach in the future, or at the very
least help kids along katipunan learn a thing
or two about reading, i must be as good
as this woman: i must be able to get
eighteen-going-on-five mishka to do his
work, and do it well.

i am what
i am afraid
of

in which mishka tries (harder than he usually does, which, if you think about this is not that much)

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:45:00 +0800

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. you’re a college student. in up. couldn’t you have been a lot more responsible about this, or to the very least extent, couldn’t you have made your entries a lot more coherent? solid? organized, like how one should be when teaching? i guess so. but i’m terrible at guessing.

this is a catch-up. this is me re-learning what i’ve learned about learning, and learning in the process, and learning that i’m not so good at learning. these are not my notes from the class (i have very little, very little to none). what this is is a massive recap of the somewhat-laid-back-but-shouldn’t-have-been-that-laid-back-because-that’s-just-slacking semester we had in lts 1.

we’re going to work our way backwards. we’re going to do this my way (teaching /is/ about doing things as effectively and creatively as possible, isn’t it?) and if there’s one very important thing i learned in lts 1, it’s that nobody does the same things in the same way, at the same pace, with the same interest or same motivation. you’ve got to make sure everybody learns within their capacity, and by doing that, you’ve gotta aim to heighten or broaden these capacities.

i’m scoffing looking at what i just typed. i want to be an optimist about this (i’ve had excellent teachers my whole life [well, perhaps except high school, but that’s another story] and i want to make them proud by showing i’m still a great student. but i don’t think that’s true anymore, but i don’t want to blame them), but as cliche as it sounds, learning about learning is difficult.

let’s do this.