On Becoming a Teacher

You might have experienced the feeling of being left out when other sections have already reached the peak of their lesson while yours is just starting off at the bottom. You might be asking your teacher a question like, “Ma’am, are we there yet?” Well that’s totally sick!

But you can’t hate your teacher if she has become oblivious of her class. You can’t despise her either if she complains at the top of her lungs that it takes her forever to reach your classroom which is on the rear of the Science Building. Perhaps you reckon that your teacher has been secretly diagnosed of Alzheimer’s or plainly having an odd symptom of rheumatism. Now you’re swearing and cursing that your school sucks because it sends you obnoxious teachers who have the infinitesimal amount of passion to teach. But hold on… What have you been up to while the teacher’s not around? If she’d left you slack-jawed waiting in vain inside the classroom, that’s not probably the perfect time to enjoy your nonsensical blabber or verbal diarrhea while swarming around the halls of General Education Building. Instead of magnifying noise pollution at a two-way traffic corridor, why not try to march your way out and read up some books in the library? I’m pretty sure the librarian won’t throw balls of fire at your face if you messed up her bookshelves. Have you ever asked yourself if you have read all the books that your age requires you to have read? To overshare, I’ve came across with this trivia over the internet while blogwalking and it’s about The 30 Books Everyone Should Read before Their 30^th Birthday. It occurred to me that I have only read two: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Man, I’ve missed a lot. I’ve wasted too much time reading Precious Hearts Romances and Liwayway. Then I realized it’s never too late to make up for my incompleteness. I still have a decade of leisure to read the remaining 28 books plus two bonus books or perhaps even more than that!

You are teacher wanna-bes. How can we pass on knowledge to our future students if we only have little of it? How are we going to enrich our minds with inspiring ideas and general information if we don’t read a lot? Come on peers, get a life!

We are pleased that “Sibalom has access to the internet and information is just one click away like how you use your cellphones in messaging” - (Sir John). There is a wide variety of information waiting to be unlocked in the internet. How you’re going to transform this information into a useful form merely depends on your resourcefulness and ingenuity.

 The internet lab in school is intended to serve as a portal to further academic researches which cannot be practically done with the books in the library. It is actually a modern extension of the school library. In most schools, social networking sites like Facebook, Friendster or Myspace andmicroblogs like Tumblr, Plurk or Twitter are banned on their browsers. It is due to the figures revealed in a survey by IT Company Global Secure Systems that “52 per cent of youngsters use Facebook during lessons for up to one hour in every ten that they spend in school.” It is also for the reason that these sites have become a breeding place for cyber bullying. Sadly, UA students have taken the liberty to expand their social circle on Facebook and several others even feign ignorance in visiting pornographic websites and downloading porn photos and videos. Little did they know that pornsites have spyware and adware that contains malicious codes which can harm computers. It is annoying and disturbing that they are tolerated to do such stuff inside the internet lab.

                There are many ways to ‘waste’ your time to worthwhile things while surfing the internet. Instead of poking someone you don’t know or tagging incriminating photos of yourself on Facebook search other wholesome websites that can offer you reliable and useful information. A keyword search is helpful when you Google up chunks of information that are categorized by Photos, Videos, Books, Blogs, Realtime and Discussions/Forums. You can even stream video tutorials for grammar and English proficiency on Youtube. I have personally tried this interesting stuff and I swear it helped me a lot.

What does it take to have an interactive learning environment? Should it be the teacher talking in front of the class while her students are lolling their heads on their seats? Or should it be the students bombarding themselves with various ideas while the teacher is seated at the back as she facilitates the class?

                For several others, they’re probably pissed off when the teacher jumpstarts the first meeting of the semester with assignments of topic reports to be presented in class by each student. Apparently, somebody will think that he’s damned by the Fates because he has to deal with a bummer teacher for a whole semester. Another may think that his teacher is such an apathetic couch potato thinking that the teacher might just lurk at the back staring wearily to a classmate who’s having a “stuck between a rock and a hard place” moment while presenting his topic report. You think that’s awful and you already want to regurgitate your existence out of the classroom. Before you decimate your heart with too much animosity, try to hold back. A classroom won’t be much of a classroom if your geek teacher does all the talking. Take a mental note of this: the role of your teacher is to facilitate your learning not to spoon-feed you; to manage classroom activities not to twaddle with you. If you aspire to become a teacher, then it’s probably wise to assume the role of a teacher in the classroom starting as a peer facilitator and co-communicator. Turn away your stage frights; don’t fret because everybody has the same fear. Set aside hostility and reinforce yourself with optimism. It is your task to make the class interactive by indulging yourself to sharing of inspired ideas and emphatic insights. In the end, you’ll be leaving the school equipped with the necessary aptitude for teaching. Now that’s epic!