How to know if you really understand something?
Teach like how you would a five-year-old. That’s what an old professor of mine used to say.
And now you know how I am spending my time these days.
Right before school started, I was reassigned to teach another subject instead of General Mathematics, my original assignment. I personally thought the reassignment was a good thing because I would probably have a hard time dealing with teaching the perpetually least popular subject among high school students, especially now when education is making use of distance learning. No offense to the company I work for, but the modular learning implementation is a bitter pill to swallow for these kids. Hell, it’s a bitter pill to swallow for everyone.
I want to think that it’s all just part of adapting to change, but if change means I have to feel like my eye cells are slowly dying due to too much time spent staring at digital screens, then this is a huge problem.
Ideally, with the “modality” adapted by the department, the lessons should ideally be already within the modules themselves. All the teachers have to do, is to follow-up on the students’ progress on the modules. They are “encouraged” to take initiative and go an extra mile in making kids understand the lessons.
However, I have to admit that there have been a lot of bloopers relating to the quality control of the content of the modules. Take this for example:
A student of mine sent this because he couldn’t understand the question.
He sent the following meme after:
Even I had to stare at it for 10 minutes to think about the writer’s original thought when he or she formulated the question. I ended up giving bonus points because the question was basically irredeemable.
Other bloopers include:
Good God.
I can forgive the soulless black and white printing, I know no one in our government could afford colored printing for all 7000+ students enrolled in the school I work in, but what I can’t seem to forgive, is the flying unidentified objects which are supposed to be “rocks” passing through what is supposed to be the instructions for a module activity.
These were just the examples I personally encountered under my subject, and there are many more hilarious ones in mainstream social media. Based on how often I encounter these things online, I highly doubt if any amount of quality control was done to ensure the content was readable and did not have any bloopers such as this one.
The department adopted modular learning because it was supposedly the most equitable option for students coming from different backgrounds. Majority of the students enrolled in public schools come from the provinces which do not have sufficient signal for adequate internet speeds.
Some of them could not even afford to have any basic gadget or any access to WiFi at all, which could support distance learning in the middle of this pandemic.
That’s why I find it necessary to aid my students in a way which could be the most available for them. I discuss the lessons, on my messenger. Video call? Voice call? Nope. I type all of them down and prepare the things I have to say prior. I discuss in my native language, prepare whatever it is I have to say in Visayan since some of them have a hard time understanding English. I prepare photos or visual aids to be sent in messenger to help them visualize the lesson better. I encourage them to take down notes or screenshot the discussion so they won’t have to worry about scrolling back and encourage them to share their resources to those who couldn’t be available during discussion time. I don’t require that they attend but I highly encourage them to do so, so they could get more out of this subject than if I didn’t discuss anything.
However, this teaching experience is also a learning experience for me.
In my first week of teaching, I had to deal with my students sending inappropriate pictures in our messenger group chat, the overwhelming amount of notifications from my students and teachers who were messaging my account non-stop, the frustration of having laggy devices and an even laggier internet connection in the middle of my discussion, going to sleep at 3 am in the morning to finish editing my visual aids to aid my messenger-based discussions, squeezing time off to catch up in arranging and stapling modules to be distributed and constantly looking for ways to improve how to manage my tasks and do my other responsibilities at home. With all of these happening I realized the following:
I don’t know how to deal with badly behaving students on the internet
Discussing the modules is one thing, dealing with unwanted behavior from my kids is another. I really have no problem catering to students’ curiosities; in fact, I enjoy it. It means that they really find the subject interesting and worth talking about.
But when it comes to behavior I do not want to see online, it’s really something I find myself struggling with and has been ticking me off for quite some time. I would like to think that the situation could be a lot worse if I was in a normal face-to-face school setting because at least I could readily call out the students responsible for making such a mess and have them answer to the guidance counselor.
However, the online world has its own way of making things complicated when it comes to enforcing discipline and bad behavior.
Many of my students are teenagers of 17-18 years old, I’m pretty sure they are well-versed on how to use their social media accounts, but some of them lack the basic etiquette to be in one. Someone from my class sent sexually explicit pictures in the group chat and got rid of it right away. They probably thought it was just a harmless joke, but I called out the person who sent the picture and those who laughed at it. Sadly, that was all I could do. Because before I could do anything, they “removed” the messages from the group chat.
As much as I want to not take it personally because most of their age group are the more immature lot, I honestly felt mortified, and offended by what happened. Even after setting up some ground rules, there still were times when they still would not follow through.
My decision to build a new FB account for teaching purposes was smart
I like keeping my personal life and my professional life separate, so I went as far as making a separate account for teaching purposes alone. It’s my own way to keep things organized and systematic. Having to deal with 147 Grade 11 students under my Earth and Life Science subject can be tough sometimes, especially during submission of requirements, but I would rather have this and set boundaries with my time, than have everything jumbled together. It’s chaos waiting to happen, and I could already see myself abandoning my phone all together to be free from all the overwhelming amount of people I have to address.
As a result, I do not add my students in my personal FB account.
I add some of the teachers, but not all.
It saves time, and a lot of mental bandwidth.
Teaching requires effort. A LOT OF EFFORT.
Like holy shit— I cannot stress how much preparation I had to do to teach a single topic that is supposed to be peaches when compared to the ones I learned back in college. As much as I just want to shove information down my students’ throats and be done with it, my students are human beings and require some adequate amount of sugar-coating.
Sugar-coating is easier in my case because I’m handling science, and science is very easy to appreciate when you use enough color to make interesting visuals. At the same time, it also requires a lot of resources like finding the time to look for examples or adequate photos on the internet.
But to get a simple comment like this from a student makes my day and makes me want to continue doing what I am doing:
Do not underestimate the power of emojis (or lack of).
To thrive in the digital world, you need to know how to communicate the language of the digital world. This still holds true even as I carry out my discussions in social media. Emojis can help a person express his or her point more clearly, especially when the person is in a good mood. However, you can know something is serious when the person is not scarcely using any emojis at all. At the same time, it could be a sign if the person on the receiving side is not fully invested in the conversation, especially if they also don’t reply that much.
This is why favoritism cannot be avoided when it comes to a classroom setting. I am handling three sections under my Earth & Life Science subject and they are so different from one another based on their behavior online:
I have a section who is probably the most participative among the three. Probably every message I send in the GC, I get at least three ‘reacts’. Among the three sections, these are the most academically inclined and well-behaved. Eighty percent (80%) pass their assignments on time, so I hardly have any trouble following-up on their progress.
I have another section who are filled with quiet-type students. They are the least in reacting to whatever I send on the GC. It’s through these guys I experienced the awkwardness of having been seen-zoned by a group of people even after already sending 30+ consecutive messages, but I would like to think they are as well-behaved as the first section.
Finally, I have a section who bring out the parts of myself that I try so hard to hide. Because through them, I discovered that I really do not like being made to repeat stuff, (especially after saying it 5 minutes ago). I discovered I have low tolerance to unnecessary group chat noises and posting of unnecessary content like repulsive sexually explicit photos of anime in my Earth & Life Science GC. So yes, they can be quite handful especially when only 50% of them are aware of any of my announcements of important assignments. That is why I am doing my best to save all my patience for this challenging lot, because from what I see they are probably the least privileged, and probably those that need my help the most.
As much as I want to be a better educator, I also want to keep reminding my students that they really should learn how to prioritize things better given the situation. Since we are in a pandemic, their life and their family’s lives should be at the top of their pyramid of priorities.
Sure, education is important, but so is health. In fact, I suggest they place it at the second of their priorities. And then sure, after that, they can place education.
Because if working on their modules and doing their online requirements will only stress them out to a point of wanting to take their own lives, people are really missing the point of having schools reopen in the first place.
HAHA. But seriously though, stay alive and stay safe.
This is a time when I will insert a friendly PSA to encourage you to tell you (if you are a student) or your friends (if they are students), ayaw intawn pakamatya inyung modyul or online class (Do not end your lives because of the darned modules or your online class). Good Lord it’s not even well-made 😒.
Do not lose too much sleep over it, do not stop eating because of it, do not stop bathing because of it. Only lose sleep to the activities you really want to do.
I want my students to attend my GC discussions but not because they feel like it’s some chore or class requirement that they have to. I want them to be there because it’s actually something worth being present in, because it’s interesting and fun and worth listening to.
Take it from me: someone who was as suicidal as a student can be back in college. Sure, I had nice grades. I had flowery grades even 🌻. If grades were flowers, then I had a whole flower garden back in the first three years of college 🥀💐🌹. But let me tell you in metaphor that I grew those flowers out of blood money. Blood money from trading my sanity for those darned flowers. I did not have to suffer but I chose to.
If I had chosen to slow down earlier (because I did slow down after getting delayed in our thesis), I wouldn’t have as nice grades as I did back then, but I also would have been less neurotic, less controlling and more happy with myself and for other people. I do not have any regrets with my experiences in college, but looking back, I must admit that this was something I wanted to change.
Choosing not to suffer doesn’t mean that you are a bad student, most of the time it just means that you are prioritizing your health and your life over dying to achieve a certain standard, and that’s okay.