Practicing fractions, I had my students solve problems by spreading coco jam on saltines (skyflakes) and eating them. Now that’s summer is here, I will be missing another set of students who will move on to the next grade (cheese!) 
High School Teachers
One of the things I have been busy with this academic year: my Senior high school students in their NSTP class where they share stories to second and third graders. Teacher Bam and I bring our almost-adult-kids kids to two public elementary schools every Monday to inspire in younger kids the love for and of reading. The thought that I am able to build memories of this sort in my high school students’ hearts and minds makes me grin and smile in a sly way. Well, knowing what being a teenager is all about, the plan is to inspire them to help bring change in our country; but actually the greater plan is simpler: to care for, think of, and spend time with people other than themselves. For now, I think that is more than enough.
I’m making change after all.
On Being a Dad and a Teacher
I haven’t blogged since Nov of 2012. My mind is full of thoughts about life and where I am right now. I am about to end my third year of teaching and at the moment I am starting to think of other things I can do or other places I can be. Top of my head: do I really want to be a teacher?
Teaching sucks you into this limbo where you find your self asking, is teaching for me? For one, I cannot complain about my salary as mine is one of the highest-paying schools for an early grades teacher. The work does however make sure that that pay is worth their pockets, thus I have meetings until nine, work I have to bring home, and a class that I’m not even sure is paid.
Yes, money matters to me. Probably not as much as it matters to the bourgeois, but it does. You see, I have been, and probably will be teaching children most of my life. I want to for I find peace in being with them.But right now, it’s like I’m working the moment I wake up til the moment I sleep. It gets tiring sometimes. With this, it’s like I work and work and work to earn. Money isn’t working for me.
So what if it isn’t working? Well, it is my dream to start my own family (I proudly think I have what it takes to be a good dad) so I have to be financially stable to do that, and as society isn’t really accepting of people like me who are outside the norm–no laws to protect me, no marriages, etc., I have to work harder for I might have to do it on my own. Then again, who knows?
So yes. Money matters to me because I will take more responsibilities when I become a father. I will be living for other people and I have to prepare for that. Right now, I don’t have the financial stability and by the time I become a father, I might have been already burnt out by teaching.
I love teaching, but how do I not burn out and earn more? 
Here’s Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers where they became fathers to many children 
Forced Shirt
Less than three week before Christmas break, I found myself buying a shirt from a rather convincing salesman. He gave me a brochure and told me
Here are the products I’m selling, you have to buy and I bet you’ll pick the black diamond soap and the black shirt”
I had to buy. I wasn’t given a choice. Amazed by his style of selling and wondering why he was so sure of what I was going to buy, I said I’ll check it out and tell him the next day. That night after going through the brochure, I grinned as my curiosity was satisfied in a funny way.
The reason the salesman was absolutely sure of what I was going to buy was because those two items were almost the only items for men.
Amazingly sly and witty for an eight-year old entrepreneur.
Lunch Rants
Crunch time.
Even if I am tempted to list all the things I have been doing since I took certain roles in our department and in the school, I’d rather not.
You see, I have been talking about these roles to myself and my friends a little too often.
- “I’m stressed”
- “I’m tired”
- “This is too much”
- “Why me?”
The words just keep on coming. What I thought were friendly conversations turned little by little into lunch rants.
Ranting isn’t necessarily evil, in fact sometimes it does help relieve stress. However, everyone has his or her own thoughts and issues. Ranting all the time to your friends is like putting your rants and theirs in a ring and have them wrestle.
Why am I thinking about these things? Well because my responsibilities have never amounted to this much. I am frantic, nervous and scared that I have been ranting to everyone.
So, I’m going to stop right now (as two cute kids are tapping my table as they enjoy the live music right beside where I’m sitting anyway and my laptop’s moving like crazy. *giggles*).
Because I’ve been given a lot, and I’d like to believe it means something. I brush it off my stout shoulders and start making the most out of it. I love teaching so I have to love the non-teaching aspect of teaching too!
Sabi na nga ba mali sila noong sinabi nilang walang matutulong ang computer games, kasi ang feeling ko ngayon para lang silang side quests sa Diablo o Pokemon kung saan marami akong makukuhang EXP points o di kaya tataas ang chance na makakuha ako ng mga rare weapons.
The Video Jock in the Teacher
I had my students listen to pop songs and have them list down sentences with pronouns in them. They had lots of fun! Guess what this music video is?
The Opposite of Sticking Down
i drove to a hundred and twenty, cried, and let the wind return the drops back to my eyes, watched a movie on my own, felt infinite (Chbosky), drove a hundred and ten, got home, and felt numb.
The Teacher in His Hospital Bed
My platelet count is going down, I am not yet done with grades
My appetite has gone berserk, I am sure I’ve lost some weight
My sore throat has been stabbed a lot, I can’t swallow, I can’t sing
My skin is now a mestizo’s, red blotches, pink freckles
I am now officially hot, 39 degrees give, take
But all I want to do right now,
is to start getting well fast
I miss my bed, I miss my books,
I miss everything I own
My health, friends,family,students, to everyone my heart belongs.
The Day I Openly Talked about My Homosexuality with My High School Students
Today is the day I felt I directly contributed to World Peace.
Our high school students were tweeting their hunches about our sexuality. So my co-teacher and I finally decided to talk openly about our sexuality and made it the topic for discussion where everyone can simply ask questions about homosexuality without fear and contempt.
Interesting questions came up.
- How did you know you were gay?
- Can you choose not to be gay?
- Was it hard coming out of the closet?
- Was it hard for you when you were growing up?
- Do you want to have a partner someday?
- Did you ever want to be a girl?
- Have you ever had a boyfriend?
We explained several things about homosexuals too.
- Being gay doesn’t mean we’re extra attracted to people–we are as attracted as anyone else
- Not all homosexuals are pedophiles or sex offenders
- Being homosexual and transgender are two different things altogether
- Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality and that even if you don’t agree you have to learn how to respect these differences in belief.
It didn’t stop at homosexuality though. The entire point was respect and acceptance. In the end, all we are hoping for is harmony among people, that differences are to be embraced and not to be condemned, that this conversation we had with a bunch of 14 to 18 years old would help each one accept one another.
It was tough. It made us sweat like bacon in a frying pan, but we did it hoping to teach these young minds respect, love and human decency–hoping we made a difference.
(BTW, Here’s a book I really would love to have. Just saying! 
)
taken from http://booksforkidsingayfamilies.blogspot.com/
The Rain, My Students, Literature, and Water in my Head
In the past year, I have been learning about literary criticism and theory. I was forced to know who Spivak, Damrosch and Hunt are. I was taught that everything is discourse, a play of power and knowledge according to Foucault. I was made to evaluate representations, deconstruct narratives and construct and reconstruct canons.
I don’t know, but learning about these things also made me think I’m a superhero. Suddenly, I was equipped with different perspectives to view my world–which is mainly teaching children. Suddenly, though I may be in the bottom of the class, I felt I had more power to save the world, to change it. Suddenly, politics and economics are involved. Suddenly, life’s issues aren’t just life issues anymore. I was starting to learn new things. Uncovering information that could very well protect me against baffling concepts or help me understand them.
And then I got my heart broken.
I am no superhero after all.
I forgot that learning about how the world works will not make you immune to unfathomable sensations such as pain within. That after all, I am still an individual who can get—well, wet.
It is raining so I decided to use Shel Silverstein’s poem in my class today. Though literature isn’t Darna’s stone or Peter Parker’s spider bite, it is still respite from inner chaos that I am sure even Spivak, Damrosch and Hunt cannot explain, or even problematize.
Rain
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can’t do a handstand–
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said–
I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.
After the giggles of my grade 2 kids as they imagined the rain overflowing in the author’s head, I asked them to wear their jackets and to get their umbrellas.To their delight, I brought them outside and together we read the poem under the ”slishity-slosh” and pattering of the rain.
Right now, my thoughts are a puddle of questions, but for now my student’s laughter, their merry water splashing, should suffice in bringing peace in my head. Then again, maybe putting water inside my brain is still the better option. Then all I have to do is to step very softly, walk very slowly, and avoid doing a handstand.
