I am a snob.
For almost twenty years, I thought that I had the most kindly and understanding disposition that all teachers should have.
I have been silently fuming at the way teacher ridicule and put down their students… how they especially blame the students for some fault that they tend to mirror upon them… how they would dress the students with inadequacies that their own has initially triggered…
However, I am feeling burdened with the same kind of feelings today.
Why? I am bound by contract to teach a bunch of out of school youths and adults at some not really obscure barangay here in our place.
I find the youths okay but the male adults are tiresome. I hate their guts and attitude and that is severely depressing and distressing.
I love teaching but I guess I am not cut out to teach people who have given up on education along time ago and tend to question all the value I bestow upon certain things that are beyond their comprehension.
I love my students at the school where I am teaching.
I could not say the same thing for my adult literacy classes though. And that reinforces the ugly thought that I am an intellectual elitist: a mental snob.
One time, I taught them about geography and the different continents. I felt that this geographical knowledge would give them a world view and thus trigger an urge in them to want to learn more by themselves.
Unfortunately, one male adult asked me if this is in the national test that they need to take to pass high school or elementary. One previous test taker who did not pass said that it is not there.
I wanted to scream in frustration. I mean, who has a professional license to teach here?
Teaching children and teens is fun and comfortable. They do not challenge a teachers capacity and teaching style especially if they can sense tha it is for them.
Trying to teach a bunch of adults who are older than myself is taxing and demanding. I am not up for the job, I am afraid.
Heck, I am only 23. What do I know of marital problems and things like that?
I have always lived in a mental bubble that is surrounded by education, books, studies and great things while they lived in the real world where not everyone can have his or her own ivory tower.
Theirs has been a life of drudgery and my single aim was to give them a view of what life is there other than the one they grew up in.
But, all they wanted from me are answers to the test. Specific, practical answers to multiple choice questions.
When I asked my teacher if she would want to take over my literacy classes when she graduates in college, she said.
Indi takon. Agwantahon ko na lang ang lower sections sa high school. (No way, I would rather bear teaching the lower section students in high school).
And what is in there for me? Why am I teaching or doing something that I do not want to do in the first place.
The usual answer: My mother made me do it.
She is the coordinator of our school when it comes to these things and she has been doing the thing for several years. I do not know how she did it but she thrives on working with adults like herself and giving them a new chance at life.
Hwaaaat?
Yeah. New chance at life. Whatever. They did not make use of the chance they were given in the first place. Not everyone is given a second chance…
What do I really want to do with my Saturdays? First, I want to wake up late. Then, I want to drink a cup of coffee and power up my laptop (I just did, hehe and its 8:17 in the morning. It is a Saturday too, and it means I am late.) and tinker with some personal essays and pieces I am working on.
After that, I want to read and study and then, in the afternoon, I would go off to an internet café and surf the net.
I will probable chat with some friends.
On better days, I would probably want to go to Iloilo just to window shop, and relax.
Because this summer, I intend to enroll in one of the University’s graduate school here to begin my much awaited masters degree.
Anyway, life would be much better if I gave up these kinds of classes. It is just so not me. I mean, I am pretty impatient with people who do not value education, culture, the arts and other intellectual pursuits.
Well, my usual high school students do not value them as much but neither do they challenge my authority in the classroom.
And neither of them holds these kinds of things against me.
It is so lame. I mean, I am glad the government has provided a new opportunity for people like these. I just wish the people themselves would realize the chance they are given.
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