Accreditation as I see it

Dali,
manghabol kita ka ramig kag tun-og kang bag-ong bun-ag nga adlaw.

This is a late post of my personal snapshots taken of the fuzz that is called AACUP Level 1 Accreditation. These photos are the sights that I rose up to one morning (December 10th, if I'm not mistaken) when we stayed overnight at school to prepare for it:

 The fog makes the oval behind the mango trees look as if a hundred invisible sprinters has started an early run on it, and disappeared in a cloud of dust. This is just outside the School of Education building.

Amazing moments that transpired so far on my 27th year

Amazed.

 Alternate title: My first semester as a part-time instructor in a college situated in a non-urban environment

Also: How life has been so far, for the first whole year (it’s not actually a year but I feel like it has been) that I spent in a non-urban environment

I know I do this all the time. I come to you and delight in you and then I leave you because I become too busy with my life. But remember this, you’re always in my mind.

Teacher and slam poet Taylor Mali performing "What teachers make"

I came across this video from Aussie blogger, Eden Riley's Edenland and I'm thankful she shared this video because this poem performed on stage by Taylor Mali, who is, according to his site, http://www.taylormali.com, "one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the few people in the world to have no job other than that of poet."

Anyway, this pretty much shook me to my core, being a bum that I am right now, doing nothing except blog and maybe accept a few odd writing and editing jobs that kind friends throw at me, felt that I really have ignored my destiny.


I know I should teach. Again. I know I should, but then, at this point in my life, after all the disheartening experiences and encounters that I have had in my three years of teaching, I feel like I don't want to be in that place again. It is very sad because I want to teach again, but I just lack the heart.

 Taylor Mali, who is "a vocal advocate of teachers and the nobility of teaching," with his works such as "What teachers make," is an inspiration. My desire to teach wanes from time to time when I remember all those ugly experiences that I've had with bosses and colleagues who should have been the first persons to encourage you. But then I guess, I'll just have to take that leap of faith, as they say, and just keep that thing inside me, the real reason why I took up Education, burning.

God, please light the fire and keep it ablaze.

Restaging a show put on by a formerly abhored artist, and loving every second of it

Who'd have thought that after ten years, I would be back where I've started?

It's just funny that this time I'm on the opposite side of the teacher's table, and honestly, I am still stunned that I found myself once again on this place that has made me into, well, me.

It's been only a mere three months since I've started teaching in INHS- School for the Arts, and believe it or not, I've managed, in a couple of occassions, to do what Sir Rex had done several times during our high school stay in this crazyhouse --yank open each locker door and throw out messy/wet/smelly tshirts and leotards and undershirts, and dirty socks and sneakers from Girbaud to Chucks, and Algebra workbooks, and unwashed lunchboxes (which shouldn't have been in there, in the first place) in a perfect 180 degrees trajectory out the door!

May my students forgive me but yes, I simply couldn't help it. Perhaps it came from impulse, that ugly little red nerve threatening to burst inside my brain that twenty four kids managed to switch on just by being very messy, very irresponsible, very snotty, very foul-mouthed, and ugly-mannered, and very everything!

But then perhaps it also came from wanting to try to do that very thing-- what seemed to my 14 (or was it 15?) -year old mind as an act that was full of flair, full of extravagance, a memorable finale to an impulsive reaction from an abhored yet idolized teacher of Biology. And so perhaps I simply wanted an encore performance, starring myself.

Thank you, Sir Rex for inspiring me to break plastic garbage cans by throwing them in the middle of the room for the sad reason of being unemptied, and to experience the sheer thrill of letting an Algebra workbook fly!