Learning to Teach

My student was present today. I asked where he went and what happened to him the past few weeks, only answer I got was where he spent the holidays. I didn’t ask him any further. Not much else on the topic I need really.

There’s very little to talk about with the lessons. He’s a bright kid, breezed through the lessons in an hour or so. I’m thinking of giving him some higher level things, since the things we’re currently tackling do not challenge him, and we get to do the lesson plans for the following week’s lessons.

After the lesson, we talked for a bit. I asked him about his environment, current events, things about him, how he’s holding up. As we were chatting, a female classmate came and trash-talked him, the childish name-calling kind. As expected, he responded in kind. She called my kid “makulit”, said he liked picking fights, claiming that he cursed another kid and threatened to kill him. He called her “mas makulit”, said she was no different, worse even. Went so far as to give a recent example. The girl defended herself, and the cycle went on. Normally, I wouldn’t mind. I also had my taste of such games. But something made me defend my kid. I took that chance an impromptu lesson on values to the little girl, as well as my kid. I made my point as clear as I could, “kapag sinabi mo, gawin mo. Panindigan mo. Kapag hindi mo gagawin, wag mo sabihin. Halimbawa, ako. Hindi pa ako nagsisinungaling sayo. Puede mo akong pagkatiwalaan sa mga bagay-bagay, pero halimbawa sinabi ko na ‘bibilhan kita ng burger sa susunod na linggo’, tapos hindi ko naman ginawa, maniniwala ka pa ba sakin? hindi na rin diba? Yun lang ang punto ko. Lahat ng sasabihin mo, panindigan mo, kasi, kung hindi, walang maniniwala sayo.” I tried to be as impartial as possible , “hindi ko sinasabing naniniwala ako sa kanya. Pero hindi ko rin puedeng sabihin na naniniwala ako sayo, dahil wala naman ako doon nung nangyayari yung sinasabi mo. Wala rin ako nung nangyayari yung sinasabi niya. Hindi ko alam kung saan ako papanig.” Three more students came and sat near my kid and the girl, which surprised me a little. I continued on with my lecture, then going into the concept of first impressions and why its important not to trash-talk a person in front of somebody who isn’t aware of the situation. 

It’s amazing how children think. Just before their class time, the little girl was telling me about their principal. She was talking about how their principal got angry last Friday. The topic became a heated discussion when some kids butted in saying the principal was angry last Thursday. I noticed two things. One, they never realized that it’s possible for the principal to be angry on both days. Two, neither camp talked about why the principal is angry. I wanted to ask my student about the matter, but my time ran out and he went to class already.

As I was on my jeep ride home, I was thinking to myself, “was I like this when I was a kid? What effect will somebody like me, who went on a fairly long tirade after a children’s quarrel, have on these children?” I think I’ll remain a brother figure for a while. See how it turns out. 

I won’t be kidding anybody with that timestamp I guess.

Hey. My name is Alvin Yu. This blog is for my Literacy Training Service class. What we do is, we teach kids how to read. Sounds simple right? Not to us. Apparently, there’s this whole idea of “one letter at a time, one letter leading to the other” kind of thing. I guess that could work better in, say, a large classroom, where the pace is defined by the students collectively.

But, we are doing this one on one. I’ve had friends whose students actually complain about the pace of the lesson. The one I remembered most was, “Yan nanaman? Alam ko na yan e!” On one hand, you could say that the students are pretty smart, which they certainly are, given that they figured the lesson out already, even before the teacher finished the lesson. On the other hand, it’s the teacher’s job to keep the students interested in the lesson. If that takes a complete overhaul of the lesson plan, then let it be.

My own student, a third grader named Rommel Mas, is kind of the classic “unknown genius” kind. He finished the majority of the given lessons in half the time. Of course, you have to consider that he already has some mastery of the alphabet and words to a degree. I started to try teaching English to him upon request. I tried to teach him the way I was taught, we went walking around looking and naming stuff. I was asking him orally “What’s this?” and “What’s that?” I was going to translate to written the week after, if he didn’t go absent for 3 weeks straight. I’ve been meaning to ask the teacher about that, but the idea didn’t occur to me until the  last week of class. Shame.

In the weeks that my student was absent, I have been shadow teaching(I guess you could call it that) with classmate and friend Christopher Omega. It’s interesting to note that I don’t remember their names with absolute certainty, but they do remember me. Their names are JR and Joshua if I remember correctly. They’re good kids who surprise us every once in a while. The way kids think generally often surprises me in a “Why didn’t I think of that?” way. For example, the lesson was the letter ‘M’, we had them naming things like “manok”, “mangga”, etc. Then, the next picture was a bowl. Both of us were confused, thinking “This IS a bowl right?” Then one of them, I forgot which, said “mangkok!”. I felt pretty dumb then. I guess I could learn a thing or two from them.

What’s really interesting about them is their values. In normal lessons, they are usually behaved, definitely not subdued. Just a very calm, behaved demeanor. They do not speak unnecessarily too often, they follow orders when given, they clearly have a good idea of how to act properly. I once thought that this was due to shyness in front of strangers, but that was disproved in the Christmas Party, when they won three loot bags between the two of them. Teacher Chris and I told them to share and left them for a while. Without any order or supervision, they took turns taking a piece of the contents of the bag one by one. They had a good sense of fairness and good trade. If only older people could act the way these children do. These children could certainly teach older people a thing or two about greed and fairness. They certainly taught me.