i did not spend my whole summer vacation thinking about my post-Pisay crisis (refer to my previous post). i was preoccupied for about a month because of Headstart, an academic advancement program given by Lantaka, a youth club and study center. Headstart aims to give sophomore and junior high school students a taste of the lessons they will learn for the incoming school year. i was invited to teach chemistry 1 to incoming sophomores.

i accepted this invitation to teach because this will give me the opportunity to improve and harness my teaching skills. i have developed a passion for teaching, and i have always dreamed of teaching at pisay after i graduate from college. so if i want to be a teacher someday, i have to act like one sooner or later to train myself.

well, things did not go as planned during Headstart. first, the day of election was unaccounted in making the schedules, and the schedule was fixed, giving me less time to teach everything. i had to readjust, so i had to teach for elongated periods everyday. second, our pace was much slower than what was planned, especially because i could not control my class. i admit to this being my greatest weakness in teaching. and i am still learning to impose more control on my students. this and a lot more factors resulted to my students learning less than half of the lessons in store.

this was the first time that i taught chemistry to anyone. so i admit that i know little on how to teach chemistry in the most efficient way. i know and admit that i did not give my 100% in teaching. and to that i apologize to my students.

but what do i get? a week after Headstart, there was a closed retreat. a co-teacher, eduard (also from pisay 2007) went to the retreat, including some other headstart students. he told me some students of mine that were also there spent some nights imitating me and my "mannerisms". (i didn't know if i had any.) so this is what i get after striving to make them learn. to be backstabbed and everything.

this is where i realized that i was struck by bad karma. last year, we made fun of one of my teacher's mannerisms, like "so that", "but then", "electron, order!", and so many more, behind her back. [her identity will be kept secret.] worse, we once tallied every mannerism that she says during class. we also made fun of her teachings because she said something like "negative times negative is negative", and so on. now, it's my turn to be made fun of during my back.

i reflected on this, and i realized that i was not appreciating how much the teachers spend many sleepless nights just trying to understand every concept that they are about to teach, making it easier for the students to understand. i did not appreciate how teachers strive to make their students learn. i felt ashamed by making fun of what they had spent so much time to prepare.

to those who backstabbed me and made fun of me, i hope you realize what you have done as i had. never make fun of your teachers. because you owe a lot to them. they have sacrificed everything just to make you learn, and i hope you appreciate their sacrifice, despite of their mistakes and mannerisms. and so i apologize to all the teachers that i had made fun of, especially that teacher which i mentioned. i have come a long way, thanks to all your efforts to push me forward.

(good luck and have a happy school year to those we have left in pisay. batch 2008, you have control of the school now. do your best. continue to uphold pisay's reputation.)