There are times when I feel proud and happy to be a teacher. However, there are also times when I seriously consider looking for a different profession, going into software development, opening my own coffee shop, or starting my own invention company.

Because you see, aside from the challenge of making children understand and enjoy understanding the lesson, teachers face the difficulty of behaving like models – the very personification of ideals such as truth, fairness, knowledge, objectivity, and rationalism.

I guess the difficulty springs from the fact that teachers, regardless of how ideal they’re trying to portray themselves to be, are human. And being humans, they, we are not exempted from mistakes, biases, and emotions. God knows how hard we try to become fairness and perfection personified. But the thing is, no matter how much effort we give, we are bound to show faults and shortcomings.

We can sometimes be hasty, nearsighted, overzealous, overly sensitive, overly devoid of emotions, too involved, or completely detached. We can’t help but commit errors, overlook a few things, or sometimes even misjudge a certain person or event.

We are all subjected to these things despite the fact that our profession entails us to be perfect. It’s a very difficult responsibility and a very costly one too because whenever we do show humanity by committing mistakes, we’re not the only ones that pay for our mistakes. Other teachers, the parents, and of course the children too suffer for our mistakes.

It is our curse. It is our burden. It is what makes human teachers.

I always thought that cancer was bad regardless of whatever case or type it may be. I was wrong. It is worse in some cases.

You see, even though cancer cases are, statistically speaking, typically fatal, there are certain types that give you more than a painful death. Colon cancer, for example, depending on stage, can make you suffer from abdominal pains, constipation, irregular bowel to no bowel movement at all, and so much more inconvenience. Compared to other types of cancer (that are often painful when metastasis has already been reached), colon cancer makes you undergo so many other things that are not just painful, but also annoyingly bothersome. (And I’m not even talking about chemotherapy yet.)

Colon cancer, similar to other types, is hard to detect at an early stage. Usually, the symptoms are observed when the cancer has already progressed which makes it harder to prevent. However, unlike more common types such as lung cancer (whose prevention method usually just involves staying away from the carcinogen), it can be addressed by taking in natural supplements or colon cleansers like bowtrol.

Anyway, whatever the case is, colon cancer or some other type of cancer, I’d still rather not get any.

When I was young, the only form of electronic gaming consoles we had were those from Nintendo. They were popularly and colloquially known as game & watch. These were handheld consoles which usually featured just a single game and sometimes functions as a clock or an alarm.

Now, there are several gaming  consoles to choose from. The more popular of these are XBox from Microsoft and Playstation from Sony. They’re more than just gaming consoles. Their latest renditions allow users to connect to the internet, watch movies, play music, read DVDs, or even store information. This is why parents such as I, are finding it harder and harder to resist the temptation of getting one for the kids. Unlike before, it is so much more difficult because there are so many things you’re saying no to once you reject  the idea of these game consoles.

However, no matter how you look at it, no matter how reasonable they seem to be, gaming consoles will always carry with them risks of distraction or even addiction. They will always have the potential to ruin studies (by destroying study habits and concentration), cause dispute between siblings, or sometimes even affect budget (not only because of the initial cost of the unit but also because of electricity bills).

I’m just so glad mateo has not reached that age yet. I still have some time to decide whether we would allow him to have one or not. Until then, he’s sticking to books and toys.

Christmas is just around the corner. I know since I’ve been waking up in the middle of sleep recently because of the cold. Sometimes, it gets so bad that I have to get out of bed and turn the electric fan off because every time the wind from it hits my back, my back aches. No it’s not rheumatism. That’s just how cold it is now.

You see, unlike andrea, I am not a fan of blankets. When I’m on the bed, I like the freedom to shift to any position without restrictions. But with the absurd cold we’ve been getting recently, I guess I wouldn’t mind cowering beneath one at least until the season passes. Heck, if the temperature gets any colder, I might even persuade andrea to consider getting an electric blanket. Nevermind about freedom…

One of the most appealing part of the holiday season is the food that comes with it. The holidays is the perfect excuse to prepare food that are difficult and expensive to prepare. It’s also an excuse to eat more and binge. Andrea would sometimes jokingly tell me that she’s looking for some fat burner review to read if we’d like to try it so that the eating binge would be guilt-free. Since the holidays is fast approaching, I’m anticipating the good food.

Having a baby is almost like having a doll, although I can’t really be certain because I haven’t experienced playing with a doll before. What I mean is that babies amazingly feel like toys that can be dressed up or accessorized. I know because andrea and I both find it entertaining to let mateo try on different apparels – polo shirts, pants,  head gears, shoes, everything.

In fact, sometimes, when we pass by such stores in the mall, we’d playfully drag him inside and let him wear a cap , a pair of shoes or sometimes even some bling bling. He would then proudly step up to the mirror and admire himself while parrading around – a very self-confident baby, that’s for sure.

I’m just not sure how long he’d let andrea and i do that to him because I’m sure he’d eventually learn to refuse. But until then, we’re going to have our little doll try on more things for as long as we could.

Starting this week, I’ve started on my resolve to go back to exercising. I used to be really fit way back in high school and college and I miss not getting out of breath after going up several flight of stairs. I’ve joined Andrea in jogging around our subdivision and I also plan to use my weights again. I figured I should do something about my body and health now before I get to a point when I would resort to taking allie. Unlike Andrea though, I have no plans on going on a diet so I might as well  do more exercising.

There’s no substitute for the real thing. That’s an important lesson I’ve learned through my years of teaching children. No matter how creative you think you are, or how eloquent you hope to be, mere words can not replace the learning brought about by experiencing the lesson itself.

Take for example, the concept of aerodynamics, drag and lift,  and Bernoulli’s principle. These are very complicated lessons especially if they were approached mathematically. But if you let the students experiment with making aircraft designs and with manipulating wing shapes of their planes, they’d at least get a practical sense of what’s happening. It may not be as profound or as detailed as the algebraic approach, but it’s a more basic and grounded learning – the type that you’d remember because there’s deeper understanding.

Then again, not all lessons could be experienced first hand. There are just some topics that we could only approximate in the classroom – lessons that are just too abstract or too difficult to gain access to, no matter how many used tape drives, or magnets, or old and broken computer parts we ask the children to bring (for hands on activities). For these difficult times, the teacher just has to become the living visual aid himself/herself – a puppet, a clown, a storyteller, a playwright, whatever it takes to drive a lesson home.

It is for this reason, that I got a new-found respect for the profession and for the people who engage in it. If I hadn’t experienced it for myself, I would not have known how hard it is to actually make studenst listen, laugh, participate and learn. I feel so lucky that I’ve had lots of good teachers that taught me well

For my freshmen students who are asking for additional exercises to keep them busy on the weekend, you can download the files by clicking on some of the links. For example, these trigo function exercises can keep you occupied for some time and will help you prepare for the exams on Wednesday.

As for my graduating students in elementary, you can check out some websites for additional review materials on astronomy, the atmosphere, properties of water, hydrosphere and weather disturbances and on aquatic biomes. If you have limited access to the internet, you can give me a CD and I can burn you a copy of the presentations.

For my junior students however, since most if not all of you have immediate access to the internet, check out these sites on electricity and electric batteries. They’re good reading and review materials for the exam. Also, I urge you to look up the way Meralco bills us so you have an idea of how practical our lessons are.

Good luck!

I’ve been hearing a lot of things lately about Erate . It seems that a lot of US schools have started to participate in the program and they have been seeing good results come out of it. It is a School and Libraries program of the Universal Service Fund that provides discounts to assist most schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications and internet access. The success of the program also lies in the service provider that would be chosen for a certain school. Trillion has a team of E-rate experts who can greatly help a school district or library. It’s great to have programs like this that aims to provide students more access to knowledge and information. For a teacher like me, it sure looks good.