1 February 2001, Thursday

The things I had today were all very simple and should I say, a real heaven for a teacher. I never really liked the idea that the teacher is just a facilitator because I still believe that the teacher still has a certain degree of authority over her students. To remove this authority will be giving in to a lot of subjectivity in the learning process of the students. There are still some objective facts that the teacher needs to be the one to explain to the students. But times do come when you have to be flexible. One of those times came today.

As I said in the beginning, I had a taste of heaven today, and heaven for a teacher is to be free of any worry on what to teach her students. Honestly, I was not prepared at all for a class because I had to finish some requirements for UA&P. (This is why I decided to just go part time student next year.) So I decided to apply what I learned from my Pedagogy classes on reflective learning and the idea that the teacher is just a facilitator. I spent the second period of the grade 7 letting them visit the library and do research! Thank God again for the library! I made them research on the Greek gods and goddesses and mythology in general. I have my hands free of them for a while. However, as a teacher, of course I felt a little guilty letting them do that just because I was not prepared for their class.

Another heaven for me was the first year class because they just had to practice “New Yorker in Tondo.” Of course, I still had to oversee what they were doing and made sure that they were doing something especially three of them. I actually feel bad policing them, but with their behavior, they are asking for it. I had to give them a role to do otherwise, they would be just loitering. So I went up to them and told them to bring a video camera on Sunday to tape the play. They looked as if they took me seriously so I trusted them. I believe that trust is a basic necessity to build between teachers and students because it is the key to learning. It’s part of the bonding that leads to authentic learning as what I learned after watching “Not One Less” for Learning Management class. The long bell rang and I dismissed them.

Then I had a class with the ever lively second years. As usual they are very participative. Come to think of it, they are not as challenging as the other two levels that I teach. They are naturally talkative and vocal about their ideas which I appreciate a lot as a teacher because participation shows interest. I introduced the new piece of literature that they are going to take, Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” by doing a word web. I wrote the word TALES on the board and told them to blurt out word or words that they can connect with TALES. Funny and far-related words came out such as prince charmings and damsels in distresses. After a discussion on why and how those words relate to TALES, I told them a British tale. It was a serious to humorous tale that I got their attention and interest on the subject matter. You can see in their faces that they like hearing stories that they can relate to. They like it and they listen.