What this world's teachers should celebrate?

So there's this dedicated day for the world's teachers. Wow. That should flutter me. I am happy being one and each day of going to school to meet my students, the completion of a lesson and the demonstration that students learned something from me are enough compliments.

How I wish that one day for a teacher could be spent by affirmation and some relief from the stress of educating minds, both the diligent and the difficult ones. That's just a wishful thinking, for me, since I learned to accept that I was called for this profession and it is my apostolic ministry. Teaching being the noblest profession is I think the most difficult one, for those who have imbibed in their mindset and life system what teaching really is.

So what should a teacher celebrate? I guess, those many small things but are not valued by many in the world: having a chance to have shared even a piece of knowledge that has occupational application; having inspired a soul to have commitment to a life-changing decision; making inattentive students laugh awhile; knowing a student answer right, but who happens to always be wrong; hearing a student think aloud even though his view differs from what is commonly held; getting hold of a student's painstakingly worked learning output; and definitely seeing a student graduate, who happened to have spent very long years in school.

I have personal reasons to celebrate when my students excel. I am happy too, when I see my students commit to changing their mindset and their behavior towards learning. I have met too many difficult learners, including those that some teachers dare not to take in their class. I do, because I know that my obligation to teach is not just a plain work at all. To me, the becoming of teacher is only measured by being able to help the "hardest" to be taught learn to fend for his own learning.

On each day that I would meet my students, I have a personal measures that I am making an impact. That count to my knowledge of how effective I am in the class. It is beyong the systematic measures of evaluation, that students answer by shading numbers. Call it hunch or mere gut feel, but to me that is the most authentic means of knowing how effective a teacher is.

One, when students volunteer to do some favor you ask. Two, when students really inquire on things related to the lesson. Three, when a student say's goodbye to you with a thank you when you dismiss them. Lastly, when students can remember your name, because that is one anchor for all other knowledge that you have imparted to them.

I am not a perfect teacher. No one is. But, I try to be one damn good teacher, by avoiding what I hate from those teachers I have had. Yeah, I did have bad times with some teachers: with my first grade teacher who blamed me for some else's annoying behavior; with my third grade teacher who did not include me from being accelerated because I was a transferee; with my fourth grade adviser who whipped me with a stick because she could not manage my talkativeness.

Even when I reached some age, teachers had hot eyes on me: with my fourth year adviser who campaigned against me with my classmates; with my college teacher who failed me in a subject she moved on another schedule that caused my failure because I could not attend frequently; and with a university dean who sued me and other student paper staff because we unjustly vexed her manipulative act to shut the paper down. I love you all my dear teachers, you have taught me so much from all those things.

I have been in the academe for more than fifteen years. I have taught local and foreign students alike, here and abroad. I have met both the best and worst students in several schools. Though at sometimes I envy my friends who are earning well in the corporate world, I find myself a million times satisfied with where I am. Money could not buy that joy I find in this profession.

When I run across students whom I have taught, and they greet me -- there I know I am a teacher. That is an affirmation to me that I am someone who have been a part of one's life at one time or another. This world can never be what it is now, without teachers.

Happy teachers day to every mentor in the world! To my teachers who taught me, thank you for making one like you. Thank you my Rabbi for making me a teacher too.

What do Moms Teach Kids?

Last Saturday, I was obliged to take my nephews to Mall of Asia for this Ben10 affair. Joszcef my nephew made kulit to me to take him there on that particular day, because he said, there will be Ben10 freebies. He loves Ben10 a lot. So he negotiated earlier that week that we should go there.

He knew the schedule, its at 2pm at the Mall of Asia, but he didn't have any idea where it would be. So our first stop was at the Toy Kingdom. He would always ask me about the time and check my watch. He would not want to be late.

I took with me four of my nephews there, Bothchok, Bitoy, Dadao and Jozcef. After dropping by Toy Kingdom, we went to the Atrium where the event had started. Kids were so excited to see an alien from the containment unit. But they got dismayed when the unit was opened and the kids were told that the alien escaped.

I got dismayed too with what one mom did to my nephew. After the program, the crew started giving out sticker freebies to the kids. Adults mugged the crew, and kids where there squeezed, competing with adults to get some freebies.

When Dadao, my nephew, came out from the throng of adults, he was holding some stickers by his right hand. He was sweating, like coming from a struggle. I was happy to see that he got some freebies. Then there came this mom, with her fat son. She slowly pulled the stickers my nephew got and then give it to her son. She even had him to keep the sticker tucked in the boy's armpits.

Sitting on the stairways, I couldn't stop getting her attention. "Excuse, me miss, I saw that, that's not fair. I saw what you did." She looked at me, but as if she did not hear anything. Deadma. My nephew looked at her.

I stood up, got my nephew in my arms, told that mom frankly. "I just saw what you did to my nephew, you took the stickers from his hand. That's not just fair". I was speaking English, and there that mom appear to be dumb of what I was saying.

My mom told me never to steal anything from others, never to take anything that is not mine or which others own. Freebies are free, they are given for free. To whom it is given first, becomes the rightful owner. What can a kid at 6 do against adults? What would a kid think of adults who take away things from them which they deserve?

For my mom, stealing is next to murder. I knew from my mom, how she defended from one my relative who blamed me for his lost wallet, which was actually stolen by his own son. We were not fed from anything stolen, and she who is a widow from when I was 7 took the responsibility of rearing us to who we are now.

Kids will be kids, but they have to be trained in the way they should go. The adults role in training the child is not realized only by verbal exchange. Kids learn more from modeling. What is noble with the action of taking something from someone, to please your own child?

To spoil the child with material pleasures, without them knowing the pain of work, can only turn the child to be too dependent on their parents, and consquently be a rebel who turn their backs on their parents when what he or she wanted can not be given. Giving your child something you did not work hard for teaches them complacency. Stealing for your child teaches them to become thieves later on.

Moms have a vital role in molding their children. Kids look up to their parents as models, and when they grow they measure the worth of their parents as to how the latter made them.

Fine Thin Line that Dichotomizes Teaching

There is a fine thin line between teaching as science and as an art. Yet, this thin line like a river can present itself as gorge that divides educators in their bifurcating worldviews of teaching. I embrace both the science and art of teaching that experience taught me.

I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication and consequently earned Master of Arts in Communication Management. Contrastingly, I have set my foot on the field of education - mentoring, inspiring, transforming, enlightening, motivating, coaching, helping and teaching learners. Experience gave me a degree in both pedagogy and andragogy as I taught children, young adults, and mature adults while I worked as a teacher and trainer-consultant.

I lacked the scientific knowledge that formal schooling provides for teachers, so I turned to creativity, imagination and reflective thinking to master the competencies of a teacher. Because of this personal limitation, I engaged my self into developing a model for teaching that applies the art and science of communication. I merely modeled my personal approaches to teaching from the best teachers that mentored me, and through pinning my head on literature about education. This model is my personal contribution to the body of knowledge about teaching and learning. It is an imaginative work based on empirical works, and it has applications not only in teaching communication arts, but also in teaching the sciences.

The question as to whether teaching is an art or science, is not a common discourse among college faculty that I worked with. My colleagues never speak of the results of empirical efforts that examine education with scientific lenses. It seems to me that they have their own art and science of teaching. That teaching is rather msytical if not a result of trial and error.

The lack of scientific knowledge and philosophical foundations are merely compensated by a teacher's overboard confidence that she or he can teach. Teaching could be easy, when it is viewed as a mere transmission of knowledge, but when teaching is measured as to the students' learning, it is another story.

I no longer think of teaching, or what to teach and how to teach. Rather, I think of why the students need to learn what and how and they will be able to learn them in the given time allowed. Simply, because I am called to teach for students to learn.

If I assume that teaching is a vocation, then I have to consider it as a mission and ministry. As a mission, I am responsible to help learners achieve learning goals. As a ministry, I am to serve the academe and these younger generation with respect to a higher principled and philosophical goal. A vocation is noble calling that requires the demonstration of high morals and professional standard. A vocation is not a profession, for it finds gratification not in the remuneration, but in the reward of being able to share one's life for another's transformation.

Pedagogy, scientifically, is all about changing behavior permanently. But this should not imply that teachers utilize behaviorist approaches. Rather, it must continuously aspire to find the right means for the betterment of a learner and the learning process. The process that science offers is not fool-proof, and socially, it is unethical to use students as guinea pigs to try out techniques, tools and other things.

Scientifically as well, psychologists have determined that individuals are able learners, who learn by him/her self, in groups and in their social interactions with others, that learners are constructive and they will learn best if schools can provide the needed scaffolds for them to move to a competent state. In this case, the teacher is not central in the process - but also a scaffold.

The latter is an interpretivism, my personal imaginative thought. The art of teaching is not magic, and not pure teacher-performance. The art of teaching, for me is engaging the learners to recognize the value of education and willful commitment to its process for their personal transformation.

Teaching is performance that should enable the students to learn, it does not end as a mere spectacle that learners watch. Teaching is beyond oratory and rhetorics to fascinate learners, but a dialogue in which discourse and authentic knowing would take place. That is the art of instructional communication. As an art, there is no exact or deterministic method, because it is dynamic and evolving.

Since there is fine thin line between the art and science of teaching, there is no pride in claiming that teaching should be approached in one way against the other. Teaching is for learning, and learning is achieved scientifically and artistically.