I Feel Like A Fraud

Academic discussion in my school, I have observed, are always rather limited, if there are any. And I think that this limitation which is supposed to foster academic camaraderie and critical thinking is the reason why my school is gasping for air of excellence. This is the reason for my school's culture of mediocrity. I have always felt gagged in this school, living always with the fear that somebody from my classes will tell my ideas to other teachers. I always have to watch my mouth because I might say things that other people, being numbed by conservatism, might find wrong. I cannot even say, "fat" anymore without a colleague making it a big deal. I also think that this is the reason why I can't write decently anymore. I've been suppressing my beliefs at the expense of my way of thinking. I've been denying myself my beliefs for a mere $300 a month.

It's hard to f***** shut up, you know.

My students have always viewed me as their most free-minded teacher and they want it that way. But you see, we are in a conservative institution, so I need to dilute the things that I say to them to cover up. And I feel like a fraud. I am covering up things that I believe will show to my students the other side of the coin to the things that they believed, or things that they were lead to believe, all their lives. I want to show them that the world is so rich that they need not to only see one of its facets, but they need and would always want to see its entirety. I went in their glass-stained cage voluntarily, hoping that I will shatter that cage. In a way, I have been a little successful; my "diluted" opinions were became cracks in the mirror. I want to give more, but I am as much as inside the cage as they are.

The Shackles Of Our Mind

Written while attending a boring seminar.


I have always believed that this institution, instead of cultivating a culture of excellence, is actually propagating a culture of mediocrity.

This started with a statement from one of my colleagues. She was recalling her experiences to me as a newbie teacher in our school. She was one of the stars of her batch. She was usually given tasks such as conducting basic grammar lectures to the faculty, writing scripts for emcees, to being an emcee herself.  It was also during this time when another of her colleagues told her not to bring too much attention to herself because other members of the faculty might always tell her to do her usual extra work. Why? Aside from the fact that these extra work is unpaid, people will always be dependent on her, asking her to do favors, so in the process, becomes a hindrance to what her real job is, teaching. This is the reason why only a few teachers in our department want to show their talents.

This, I think, should not be the case. Yes, the school gives the faculty opportunities, but not everybody wants it. It's because even if they depend on these talented people, deep down, they resent that quality, they resent the achievement that the person has, and that they are just waiting for that person to make the tiniest of mistakes so they can ravish that person together. Bringing him or her down. Suddenly, being talented is a sin here. So the person, not wanting to incur the sneers of her colleagues, clam up.

You don't see me. XD

We are always told to deliver, but we are not given the supportive environment for us to really grow. Our colleagues would depend on us, but we would always have this feeling that they will be the first ones who will step on us the moment we slip.

It is rather stunting. The negative energy of the academic community stifles the growth of the teachers. And it is hypocritical of ourselves to force our students to be the best when we ourselves stunt each other's talents and scoff.

This is sad. I believe that a school will never be a cradle of critical thinking and excellence if the teachers themselves are not allowed to explore and celebrate their beliefs and ideas.

Struggling for the Remote Control

The strum of the guitar and the hum of the violin circle around our living room’s airspace while I listen to “Requiem”. However, I hear not only the melody; I also hear my parents’ whines about my choice of music.

I  swear I will fit in my mother's mouth.

You're just making noise. My father comments, and tries to press the Stop button. I whine, It's better-off like that than me rapping in a hysterical voice while blocking his way with my arm. I feel the force on my arm disappear, and with a frown he steps back; leaving me in my world of history, politician bashing, and my penchant for instrumental, j-pop and j-rock and European pop.

The history of my family is, was, and (I think) will always be a history of dominating our 14 year old mini-component. But I never pay attention to it and whatever genre my father listens to, whether it is slow rock, 50’s, or 80’s disco. I turn my attention to my dominion –the television.

My first favorite songs were “What’s up” by the Four Non-Blondes and “Ode to my Family” by The Cranberries, I was four then. But I gained complete music consciousness by the time I thought Alanis Morisette was a guy, and when the Backstreet Boys were actually mainstreet and are larger than life. It was 1996, which I considered as my baptism to the world of music industry, coinciding with my first day in Grade One.

As a young girl, I thought of myself a Spice Girls expert (in terms of knowing the lyrics) that my seatmates just stared at me in disbelief. Once, I heard my neighbor sing “Stop” in videoke with a voice like the braying of a donkey, and I decided to snatch the microphone from her hand, though my plan failed. I casually walked from the living room and out of our house, but I made the biggest mistake while putting on my slippers: I looked up at my mother who had a “look” that told me to behave myself. Scratching the back of my ear, I went inside, and endured letting my neighbor butcher my favorite song.

I'll kill the bitch who's killing the song!

Then my consciousness fell on Britney Spears, and I always thought in Grade Five that those who like her were lower life forms. But Grade Six was a different thing. I heard one of my classmates sang “Stronger” while the class was doing a seatwork:

Now I’m stronger than yesterday / Now it’s nothing but my way

And I found my self singing along. I stopped and widened my eyes in terror, realizing I became one of whom I thought were lower life forms. I shook my head, trying to concentrate on my notebook, though without success. Frowning, I thought, “Hah! So what?”, and sang with the girls, my loneliness is killing me no more/ I’m / I’m stronger.

But while my classmates already started to think of painting their faces, I thought of something different; something that would set me apart from other girls. And I found a new genre: nu - metal. The drum solos, easy-to-follow lyrics and mind-blowing vocals hooked me. And again, I found my self singing Shinoda’s rap solo in Linkin’ Park’s “In the End” with the boys during recess.

Yes, some time here we rocked and rapped. Believe me. :D

With this music background, one might think that the CD rack of our mini-component was full of my CDs, and that I hold the remote control. No. Conquering the component was still far from my mind; it was still my father’s. I kept holding on to the television until when I was in high school, as this was my MTV, MYX, and Channel V days. I literally spent my weekends and afternoons watching Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, t.A.T.u., and being amused with how big Steve Tyler’s mouth was (which left me wide-eyed in shock when my friend told me in college that he was the father of Liv Tyler).

In awe with the power of Tyler's mouth.

One day while watching, I stared for a long time at the television which swarmed with images of four long-haired guys who called themselves F4. Another boyband, I thought, and I ignored them. Whenever their faces appeared on MYX, I switched to MTV and would see their faces again, I switched to Channel V and it was showing Vic Zhou’s video. Dejected, I tuned in to the news saying that Jerry Yang will come to my country. I pouted and turned the TV off, fighting the urge to scream unless I wake my mother from her nap.

Spare me,

from

gaybands.

But before the F4 mania, my classmates were warring against each other for protecting the cause of A1 or Westlife. One camp said that the former’s lead guy looked gay; the other camp said that the latter’s members don’t know how to dance. I waited for 10 solid minutes, and the girls were rolling on the classroom’s floor with their hands on each other’s head. Then come second year high school, and they fainted and sang F4’s songs together. Foreign boybands are something, I thought. I never liked them, but if I got something from not liking them, it was coming to the conclusion that the music industry thrived and bloomed because of swooning (and fighting) fangirls (and looking at my students now, fanboys).

While everybody was singing their songs, I was discovering j-pop and Celtic music through Utada Hikaru and Enya. Both were not very convincing singers though. I always felt that I will lose my breath whenever Utada tried to belt a note, and Enya never tried to go higher than her signature monotone. But with them, I discovered the most creative songs around. Their songs were not commercial success stories here, but their songs showed that music should make the world a saner place and must shake cultural barriers. However, the fainting fangirls and the rocker boys tagged me as the resident music geek. As for me, I know a wider range of songs, and didn’t go with the dictates of music labels. I wore the tag as a badge of honor.

The music channels on free TV went off-air and I started to relieve my self of our television. I turned my eyes at the thing below our TV, and finally infected our mini-component with j-rock (Ikimono Gakari), European pop (t.A.T.u.), and anime orchestra soundtracks. Thus, I started my domination of the mini-component, the DVD player and the remote controls. However, my domination was not without opposition. My father kept on blasting Bon Jovi, and reaching for the Stop button. My mother kept on telling me that I am not Japanese or Russian, so may I turn it off now? As for me, I told them that “Our country is a democratic country”.

One day while I was playing one of my favorite tracks, my father asked me what its language was. Russian, I answered, he said it was good and reached for the remote control. I snatched it first; I smiled and turned the volume higher. It was the first time that he liked the song that I raved for, and I ended up playing it every time I turn on the component. But because my parents just couldn’t stand and understand a foreign word, I had to partially go back to Pussycat Dolls out of necessity, but I still sneaked my songs in between and owned the component again.

If only parents would take the time to sit and listen to the “weird” music stuff of their estrogen-oozing and testosterone-driven teenagers, then they wouldn’t be trapped forever in a time when Elvis was gyrating his hips and Diana Ross was telling us it’s her turn. At the same time, if kids and teenagers like me won’t go screaming from the living room (Eww! That’s so dinosaur era!) whenever they hear 60’s music that their parents loved, then they will know who their parents were before. If these happened, I’m very sure it will lead to saner households and quieter homes, because the only thing that will be heard will be the music that everybody enjoys, and not the bickering of the family members who are debating which genre (and generation) is better.

Whenever I look back at my life, I realize that it was a preparation for taking over the remote controls of our appliances. And now that I am competing against my parents for our mini-component, I notice that our house became noisier, not only because of my whining and my parents’ protests and comments, but also because of the mixing of disco music to j-rock and slow rock to OSTs: the old and the new’s cusping.

As I hear the strum of the guitar slowly fade, I run from the bathroom to the living area, and I hold my mother’s hand turning the volume knob.

A Woman Without Her Man Is Nothing

Among the twelve of us in our team, I am the only one without a partner.

And I plan on staying so.

There was one time when four of us were in the faculty room and I found myself watching my colleagues talk about their boyfriends. And as I was looking at their animated faces, I thougth that they totally forgot about themselves, drowned in their little chitchat of what makes their boyfriend adorable. Suddenly, it was as if their identity is tied to their boyfriends, as if they would dissolve into nothingness Sandman-style without their man.

Though they were happy, I was sad for them, because in a single second, in their single smile, they lost their being to another person. They became dolls, lifeless dolls, they became not themselves anymore. They are not my colleagues, not my friends, just a giggling something.

Then I thought, "Woman, without her man, is nothing".

I think of myself as a feminist. But this remark, in this one moment, rings eternal.

Book Review: Schopenhauer's Telescope

A book review which a classmate asked me to write when I was in college. Reading it now, I felt myself cringe, and I can't tell you why. 

Gerard Donovan’s Schopenhauer’s Telescope is a vaguely otherworldly novel set in an unnamed European country at the time of a great civil war. The story is spread along the course of a single day and tells the unsettling conversation between the town baker and the school teacher which ranged from the necessity of evil acts for survival and progression to the morality of this “evil” acts. You might say at this point that the novel is gory. Yes, it is in a way gory but it teaches timeless points and values that helped me in realizing things that I’ve never thought before.

While reading this novel, I felt like I am having a mental exercise because the question that were posed by the two main characters are really thought-provoking like the nature of human “evil” and the necessity of it as a tool for human progression, and if we could really demarcate the boundaries of “good” and “evil”. The next question that will be addressed is that how does this values affected my life?

We cannot really judge people according to what they have done: We must act in a nonjudgmental manner. We are different people who come from different backgrounds and cultures and the decisions that we make is not a reason for us to discriminate other people. I myself can say that I am a victim of the everyday situations in my life; even though people might say something bad about me, only I could know the things that I have to go through in doing the things that I think is right. That is the reason for the expression, “depends on the person”, we do not have the right to judge the actions of other people just because we think that their acts are wrong. Moreover, what is wrong for us might not be so for other people.

Our actions will be seen and examined by the people who will come after us: This is actually related to the first value that I had cited. People in the future will judge us. But this is not a bad thing because it actually tells us that we must have a thorough self-examination of the pros and cons of our actions. This value tells us that we must see our actions in an objective light: we must not let emotions control us in the process of this self-examination. We might be discriminated and misunderstood by our contemporaries but we might be great in the eyes of the future generation. The bottomline is that the success or failure of our actions is our sole responsibility.

When we repeatedly do something that deed becomes ordinary: The things that we have never done before might overwhelm us at first but if we try to go beyond our boundaries and try to conquer our fears, we will end up saying to ourselves that we have our lives in control. Doing good things might earn us the discrimination of other people, but we must set aside those negative comments and continue working because these things will become a part of our personhood. To use the jargon of my major, our good values will “fossilize.” But unlike fossilization, our values are not stagnant, we continue to evolve, which separates us from other creatures.

We choose the paths that we have to take and that we can’t blame the people around us if anything turns wrong: True. Life is a choice, life is what we make of it and the things that happened to us be it positive or negative will mold our character and our future decisions. It is usual for us humans to blame our mother or father or friends with our failures and we fail to listen to their side because we wallow in grief. I myself sometimes do this because I feel that I carry the whole world as my burden and that nobody could help me. But along the way, I realized that the things that happened in my life are the effects of my choices and that I can't blame anybody except for myself. This is the time that I started accepting the things that happened and the only thing left for me to do is to stand up again after a fall and continue living my life with what is remaining. This blaming of other people, I think, is one of the reason why our world today is chaotic. People who keep on pointing the blame to other people without examining themselves first. The concept of self-examination again enters the picture, if we could just see the things that we have done; maybe we would realize the right and wrong in our actions. If we succeed in that, then acceptance would follow.

We should learn from our past experiences: The novel tackled about the hideous crimes that man has committed throughout the course of human history. History is recorded so that we in the present generation could learn from the mistakes and triumphs of the older generation. It gives us the lesson that life is continuous and that we could always improve the present through examining the past. Taking this proposition on a more personal level, I can say that my experiences in the past molded me into the person that I am. I learned from my mistakes and triumphs and tried to stand up again after a failure and improve myself after a success. Like I said earlier, life is not stagnant. It is sure that the things that happened to us in the past will never happen again but one day, we might encounter something that is very similar. And our past experiences will eventually help us in dealing with it.


The most important thing is that we are alive because we have the will to live: This is the single most important value that the novel has imparted on its readers and this, I think, is the tie that binds the novel. The tragedies and successes in our life will only happen if we choose it to happen. And this would only be so if we tell ourselves that we can always do it, that we can conquer our fears and cross boundaries. The events in our lives are signs that we are alive: the challenges tell us that we could explore the unexplorable and our successes tell us that we can always make our potentials a reality.We may experience some highs and lows, our problems will surely come back in another form but we must not give up, we must continue living because this is the only life that we have. Life will always be meaningful and that the complementary things in our life like darkness and lightness, war and peace, love and hate, and living and dying has always been a part of it. It has always been a part of the lives of the people before us and would be part of the lives of the people in the future. Problems are inevitable but we must remember that the sweet things in life are also inevitable. Our happiness or the opposite of it would always lie in our own hands and it will be our choice. The most important thing that we must remember in living is that we must not loathe life, we must love it, and we must learn to live with the challenges and successes, we must have the will to live! Just like what the teacher wrote in his letter to his wife, “We might not know the things that may happen tomorrow...the problems might come again in another form...but still, the will to live will always blossom anew.” What I am in the past is not important, what is important is that I am living my life now and that I am ready to explore the unexplorable, conquer the unconquerable, and triumph the untriumphable.

It is a cliché to say that “In life, there are no rewinds.” But then it is still relevant to us as this always makes us think that we must always go for the best. We must savor every moment of our lives because we will only pass this life once. To this, I can say that we are all survivors of life.

From the Fodder: Screams of Unrest

From the fodder: A random collection of thoughts plaguing me these days.


I have so much to say, but I don't have the means to say it. My gift of words is slowly leaving me, thanks to this institution.


I don't know what to say anymore. I don't know what to feel. I've been stagnant for too long.


I think that the reason I can't write properly is that I am not allowed to say what I truly wanted. And that takes a toll on me.


Words are my only way, but it's slowly fading away.

Yes, it's all about me not being able to write a decent prose anymore. And it's eating me. What could be the reason? Any advice?

From the Old Notebook: K - 12 Education

Like what the title says, this essay was written two years ago during the hoopla that was the K-12 education. Apparently, the issue became a bigger hoopla because the curriculum will now be implemented this school year.


Who is tired of studying for fourteen or more straight years? I am. I am because I feel that my brain is so ready to explode right after I throw myself out of college. As for my parents, I can feel their tired sigh as I will finally stop draining their wallets.

You have to admit it, education is one wallet killer.

Formal schooling is a very long and rigid process of educating oneself, and I can actually measure that it is indeed very long, since I grew up studying and living in one place, my dear dear city. I saw the neighbors’ children grow up, I saw changes in the houses, and I saw my neighborhood grow in terms of population, as the said neighbors kept on sharing the night with their spouses. Bottomline? I am growing up, everybody’s growing up, and I am still studying. Some of my contemporaries stopped schooling altogether, and CHOSE to be an out-of-school youth. Their reason? Aside from the obvious, which is that they don't have money, the other reason is the length. Is ten years of Basic Ed that long? They didn’t even try to finish secondary school. I was thinking that maybe they were including college in the count which strengthened the discouragement and disinterest among them and their parents. Elementary and high school is already too long, we can’t bear college anymore, they say, they think that the time spent in school should be spent for working and not for studying. This inclusion of college in the count reflects the mentality that if a person didn’t finish college, then that person will never be able to get a professional job, pushing that person to pursue blue-collared jobs or to be part of the informal sector of the workforce. This is exactly what happened to my contemporaries, they stopped schooling, and are now working. This situation, for me, is not a bad thing, as a person does not need a degree to be a worker, he or she only needs skills appropriate to the job, or he or she can establish a business where he or she will have the income needed. There’s no need to be a summa cum laude to be a gazillionaire.

This is f***in sad.

And here is DepEd trying to push for a twelve year basic education program which they think will further the skills and knowledge of the youth, as they believe that Filipinos are already lagging behind other countries in terms of “global competitiveness”. Parents both from private and public schools were enraged by this proposal, as they will have to shell out bigger amounts of money, and in case of the public school folks, they will have to survive another two years of trying to make ends meet. We can’t blame the parents, they think that basic education is already expensive, and they still have college to think of. But hey, let the children find a way to get through college if the family does not have enough or has no money for college education. Don’t babysit a sixteen year old too much.

Christ Jesus. I wouldn't even consider having a child if he looks like him.

Well, I agree to DepEd to the extent that we are lagging behind everybody in terms of economic competitiveness and the respect received from other nationalities. But since the thrust of our government is to make workers and not entrepreneurs out of my countrymen, then I am totally for the two year extension of the basic education, provided that the curriculum will give the students enough skills to land a job or to make jobs (establish a business) even if they only have a high school diploma. An example of which is basic bookkeeping or hands-on training in the different professions, then if they find something interesting while studying, they can decide to further their studies through attending college, or applying what they have learned right after high school. The point here is that students will be ensured that they will have success even just after high school, and that the decision to pursue college education will be on their hands and not on their parents’ mouths.

This, I think, will be a very difficult undertaking, as what I am thinking will wreck the nerves of my country's attitude towards high school graduates and the college diploma. They value education, I know and am proud of that, but we put too much prestige to the college diploma, to the extent that it is already ridiculous, as we scoff at high school graduates, who are, by the way, also educated, and we can’t seem to deviate from the finish-college-and-get-a-job attitude. This attitude will be the major hindrance to the basic education’s extension’s fruition apart from the budget, political, and social will needed for the changes.
Having a job is not the sole source of income, there are millions of other pursuits that can make us get that dream car, dream house, and dream life. I am telling you this: economically speaking, the completion of both basic and tertiary education is not the sole ticket to success.

I am not saying that we must all dropout from high school or college. We are all unique individuals, and if our formula for success is finishing just high school or both high school and college, then I don’t have any issue, as our triumphs will depend on our choices. What was given here is a vision for the educational system, and probably even for our society.

The Highest and Lowest Points in Teaching

This essay was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements in one of my education courses back in college. I felt a need of documenting how my beliefs are changing. And ideologically, I am going strong. Still, it's nice to look at my essays during these times. It feels so naive yet idealistic at the same time.

Some teachers say that they find joy in teaching. Honestly, I believe them in a sense. There is always a sense of fulfillment whenever students learn. Yes, I feel that temporarily, but just to be true to myself, I didn’t have a highest moment in student teaching though I have a lowest.

Teaching is a noble profession?

Call me insensitive, I don’t care. I think that being happy about the performance of the students is something that should be reflected about. Why are we happy with it? Is it because the lesson plan went exactly as we want it to be? Is it because the students are behaved? These are, indeed, factors to be considered, but we should think that when the lesson plan is followed and ALL of the students behaved exactly as we wanted them to be, then we have a problem. The problem is that we make them conform, and conformity is against my very philosophy that I must respect my students’ individual differences. I made them all follow me and I turned them into unthinking robots for a period. Do this, do that. Therefore, I didn’t made them think freely, I didn’t make them make their own meaning. I am just happy with my teaching whenever I sense that they grasped the lesson in different ways. I don’t want to get a high moment from teaching, because I didn’t take Education to make hordes of students make me happy. I teach you; make me happy. That I think is not a good attitude. Teaching did not dawn to humanity to inflate teachers’ egos.

But I'm sure as hell don't want to look too stressed about it...

I also didn’t have a lowest moment in teaching itself, because this would truly affect the atmosphere inside the classroom. I don’t want to enter the classroom depressed and in turn, depressing my students. But I did have a lowest moment in my relationship with the other teachers in school. I like my opinions being questioned, but I don’t like my ideas being blocked, especially if the topic that I’m talking about would surely affect the students like RH Bill. One teacher did it, and I was seething in disguised annoyance. This is only one of the many examples in which schools sometimes kill the positive energy that young teachers bring. If we are so serious in educating our students and making them think, then the school must be an institution of the exchange of ideas not just between students but also between the teachers themselves. The teachers must be the ones who must start a healthy intellectual discourse about pressing issues that will surely have its effect in education. This brings me to my philosophy that teachers themselves must be free to think. If teachers smother each other to prevent them from thinking, then they would do the same to the students. They would just stunt the minds of the students and turn them into a mindless horde.

Some teachers say that they find joy in teaching. Yes, I believe them, as there is always a sense of fulfillment whenever students learn. I am yet to have that highest moment, but I’m not bracing myself, because these same teachers didn’t tell us if schools are havens for thinking, anyway. 

Shut Up, Teacher

A little essay I wrote out of frustration. I forgot about this essay until I found it in my computer's many many folders. Wrote it way back when I was doing my practicum. And looking at myself from two years ago, I realized that being in a conservative school has never diminished my beliefs.

It was a sunny late morning and the heat of the incoming summer was starting to be felt in our faculty room.
Flux of graduating students also went in and out of the room, as it was a deadline day. At my table, I was reading an article from a newspaper about the reproductive health bill and since majority of the teachers that were with me in that room were married and had have kids, I asked them if they were in favor of the bill. The teachers gave me an assertive answer, as they felt that there was nothing wrong with it and they were not killing anybody in using contraceptives. A teacher also asked me if I was for it, I said yes, and I also said my criticism on the church’s stand. However, another teacher whispered to me which dragged me away from the friendly sharing of opinions, “Do not engage in debate yet, you're still a student-teacher.” As she was saying this, the topic was still being discussed, and the said teacher asked me my motives. I said that I just felt agitated with the church’s logic. She nodded her head and turned her attention back to what she was doing.

As soon as I found a way to go back to the conversation, I looked closely at the highlighter marker pen that I was holding and said, “This highlighter's cool; it looks like a lipbalm.” I felt a sense of success as one of the teachers who answered me took my highlighter and examined it; they really welcomed the change of topic. They ate my bait.

As I went back to reading the article, I wondered on why student teachers are not allowed to give their views on pressing issues. Sure, I am young and I still do not understand a real public school teacher’s reality. But the issue at hand must surely be a part of a real school teacher’s reality, as the topic that I opened concerned not only the parents, but most especially the students, their students. I heard their god-knows-how-many conversations about their students getting pregnant at age 16 and younger, so why prevent a healthy discourse about a soon-to be policy that would have an effect in the educational curriculum? Should we as teachers be aware of these things? Should we stop ourselves in participating or even initiating a potentially intellectually fruitful conversation? I heeded the teacher’s call for me to stop babbling about the topic; I saw her point that I was not in the position to open the topic up, but I am sure that I am in the position to open up the topic as a concerned youth concerned with her fellow youth. It seemed to me that she was trying to impose the don’t-talk-because-you-are-the-state’s-robot type of silence on me. But how about her? She is in the exact position to participate in discussions, as the double-edged sword of being a citizen and teacher is on her shoulders. She is a full-pledged teacher; can she do what I can do? She is young; can she be as concerned? The school cannot be considered as an institution in a vacuum, and teachers cannot stay apolitical for so long just because the government is putting money in their pockets. We are political beings whether we like it or not, and it is our choice to be either become a catalyst of change or a perpetuator of state oppression.

How can we change our students if we keep silent? How can we contribute in making a better society for our students if we ourselves refuse to put into question the issues that will deeply affect them?

I went to the lavatory and saw the much senior teacher who took my highlighter. I asked her.

"Ma'am, is it just fine if we student-teachers initiate topics like RH bill earlier?"

"It's just fine. It's just fine for a teacher to air her views. What's forbidden for a teacher is to endorse a politician."

Two conflicting views indeed.

The teacher went out of the comfort room to go to her class, and I continued washing my hands. I remembered my reason for staying in education, “to make myself a liberal working in an overly conservative working environment.”

I stared at myself in the mirror with anger bubbling up my chest.

Administrators are Prudish People

With all the hoopla that was UbD, I was most enlightened by the seminar my school had days ago. It made me realize that UbD is actually very simple, lesson planning-wise and execution-wise. But apparently, its the administrators who are pulling us down. 

Pulling us into the pits of academic insanity.

We teachers (who have been cheated so many times already), agreed to the speaker when she said that UbD is supposed to be simpler. We filled our auditorium with the sound of our agreement and relief. 

We're close to hysterics, actually. *sigh*

But you know, administrators took it as a voice of dissent. Well, yes, it was a voice of dissent not only of probationary teachers but also of our more seasoned teachers. So, it didn't come as a surprise when our area head (and I love her) told us that the higher-ups of the institution took offense. And I say, they really should take offense and responsibility, because if we didn't have that seminar, then we wouldn't know that we are bullshitting ourselves, and that it could have been easier if they invited the freaking speaker earlier last year.

BOOOOOOOOOOO!

That seminar caused confusion. Are we going to push on with our plans? Are we going to use the plans from last year? But the topics for this year are different! Are we going to edit it? But I'm through! And the list goes on. 

These administrators shouldn't take offense if we teachers are airing their discontent, it shows their incompetence all the more. This confusion was their fault in the first place. If they have that seminar earlier on, then we wouldn't write trash lesson plans all in the name of compliance. They told us to submit our plans in the middle of the month, and then suddenly they will invite a speaker who would point out our mistakes and then they would tell us to rewrite our lesson plans? Fuck them all. Let them write the plans themselves. And it doesn't help that they gave us a more complicated template. 

We're not sado-masochists, people. So why make it so complicated?

What these administrators do not realize is that, at the end of the day, it is the teachers who would bear the burden of it all. If you go inside a classroom with a faulty plan, then you'll have a faulty class, observation, class performance, grades, and faulty national achievement test results. And when you have these faulty things, of course, they put the blame on the teachers who are just basically following directives from the higher-ups (who fucked up the whole thing in the first place). 

So, these administrators do not have the right to bitch about us bitching about how we hate the current situation. They run a private school and they have the f*****g power to adjust the FAPE format or reject the format altogether just because they can and it can be more beneficial to the teachers. But hell no, they made us do it without realizing that it is not what the proponents of UbD envisioned. And now that they are garnering the teachers' wrath, they get back to us? That's the problem with following uncritically. Shows their level of incompetence actually.

As for the lesson plans itself, it has been decided that whatever we have finished  will be left as it is and that the proper format (of EU and EQ) must already be followed in the two final quarters. But what I am bitter about is that these administrators stuck with the FAPE format. I mean, I consider that format to be a format of some humbug trying to be more significant than the proponents themselves. Why can't they accept that that format is so f****** wrong? Oh well, they don't want to admit that they're wrong so, might as well stick with it, yeah? Christ Jesus.

Teaching is good, innovation is good, and change is good, but if you are doing it the wrong way, might as well don't do it at all.