The classroom is the last place where I can find the truths I seek.
That was what I thought before my thesis mentor advised me to handle a class of communication arts students and found myself back inside a classroom.That was in 1997.
You don't seem to want to leave the university anyway, why don't you teach with us? she told me. We were at the university press where I worked. We didn't let you graduate only to become an editorial assistant.
So I said yes. I accepted the offer without even asking how much the pay was or how much the load teaching would cost me. I never really think much in the face of an opportunity as I had been wont to do.
The best time to think comes only after spending some time in practice and gaining enough experience.
What surprised me though was that the job required me to do many of the things I hadn't done, or have successfully shied and shunned away from, all my life.
How would I survive then in such a strange territory?
The thought never crossed my mind then. Not in front of a bunch of new majors waiting for me to introduce them to the history of print media in the Philippines. I never thought a job or a career would be essential to survival.
Thus, in saying yes to that three-unit major introductory subject shortly after graduation I said yes to a life I never imagined myself suited or even wildly considered as an option in my weirdest dreams. That major course became my first major course in learning how to teach.
I could even say, my first major course in learning about life.
Barely out of my khaki shorts and college idealism, that first class even turned out as my first major glimpse into the nation's future: and right into the heart and soul of the Philippine educational system. But I am not going into those big realities yet.
After all, the classroom's four corners has made my small world even smaller. But it did left me a big message: The classroom may be a far cry from the streets or from the workplace, but it is where the lead to life's bigger truths start.
The truth is being back inside a classroom reminds me that learning never ends in school or even outside at work or in homes. The classroom in bringing me back to school, takes me out of my comfort zone to force me to learn. Or to make me face a truth about myself. Or to jar learners into the startling discomfort of a realization that incites them to react and to assert and to be other than simply passive and well-behaved listeners.
Before the trimester ended several miracles happened.
One budding visual artist was able to see his two-page comic script, which he penciled and inked and colored all by himself, in a weekly Tagalog komiks. An SLR maven was able to have his photograph land a page in a monthly glossy. A would-be-teacher who wrote in Filipino won first prize in a campus poetry writing tilt and later became a member of the country's leading poetry group.
Lessons lost in class are not as great a loss as money ill-spent outside of school.
The gains may come later, but with unimaginable interest. The classroom reminded me that learning is always a struggle, a collective effort, a dip into the cultural well of values and vices that inebriate the mind.
I have not learned enough though. Many say, I should keep on saying yes yes yes and stay put inside thee classroom longer. Perhaps, for wisdom to touch my brow because I never seemed to learn.
Or to bring me back to reality. A reality check after all is that kind of surprise you get when after the second bell rings I have not rounded up the day's lesson and leave the class with endings hanging loose.
The rest is history. History may as well be one long, hard truth. Looping back and again.
Tomorrow, the classroom is the first truth that waits for me every 07:30 in the morning. Harsher still is the truth is that that morning lasts from Tuesday to Friday every week. I said yes again, no second thoughts.
I wanted to learn. I have always wanted to learn to live life fully and in being fulfilled to fulfill others. Always.
But there is always something new in the offers I get. Thus, I could never seem to catch up with the pace or cope with the change.
One student in fact just might be the daughter of my classmate way back in high school.
