7 Things teachers should do to reduce that "End of the year Stress".

Teachers' job can be stressful, but we learned how to handle it our way. :)

We all know how our job as a teacher can be overwhelmingly draining. If you are a teacher, you  know exactly what I am talking about. Humans as we all are, we wanted to get that well deserved weekends and holidays! While we consider ourselves lucky if we get a national holiday one or two in a month but most holidays just don't happen instead we get make up days for the snow days that we wished it didn't happen in winter. Believe me, I always check my calendar and circle the holidays in red!


 It is probably one of the reasons why most people don't want this job because of the very minimal holidays we get during the cycle of academic year. On the other hand, I say that we are still lucky because we have the summer holidays. That, by the way, we all deserve after a tedious 10 months of lesson planning and grading and dealing with the different behaviors of children and parents on some occasions.

That remaining two months before the school year ends could be very very stressful. And so I came up with this list of things that teachers can do to somehow help us reduce stress while doing year end reports and forms to fill out, tons of test papers and students' projects to check and all other things that seem to be never ending. Hope these will help.

1. Listen to your favorite music. I have my earphones on and I have downloaded more than a thousand songs in my phone with all the music that I like from R&B to classical music, Latin music, Filipino music, pop music, etc. Music helps me stay in phase with what I am doing, and helps me focus too. This probably works to most people.

2. Make in between conversations with fellow teachers while at work. BUT pay attention to the time! Conversation is only a way for you to not drain your energy doing one thing straight for 8 hours.



3. Take a trip to the cafeteria and back. Walking can make your blood to get into full circulation  again after long hours of sitting in your desk checking and grading students' work.

4. Get those magazines and books handy. I have two on my desk. When you feel that you had enough for the day, but actually no..you just want to have break but it is not your break time yet because you're not even half way on the pile of tests papers that you need to check. Hey, grab that magazine or that book and read few pages. It will ease that feeling of "is it 4:00 o'clock yet?".

5. Change venue. Sometimes, it feels like I don't want to stay in my classroom to work. What I normally do is take all the urgent tasks that I need to do and work on it in the library, in the section where it is always empty and spend my time working on it. Believe me, you'll get significant amount of work done. 

6. Tidy up your work station! It is always pleasant to sit in your desk in the morning, with all your things in their proper places, rather than looking at piles of tests papers, work books and laboratory reports stack like mountains on your desk and under.

7. Start your day with a SMILE. Yes, I always do. And I believe it can make a difference. I greet students and fellow teachers everyday with a simple hello and a smile. I always feel the need to spread happiness and positivity around, especially like this time of the year when all requirements are set to due.

I can't wait for my most deserved summer break!

And don't forget to put the Philippines in your bucket list. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g294245-Philippines-Vacations.html

All I have left is Hope

I knew the time would come that I have to be far from the people I care most in my life. It was very painful. I struggled to keep myself strong while I put some of my clothes in the luggage. I tried to assure everyone that I will be okay. And I made a promise that I will come back. At first, I thought I could keep what I said, that no matter what I will stay. It didn't happen.

I am now one of the fathers who sacrifice their time of being with their children to make a living thousands of miles away. It hasn't to be this way. I tried so hard to be with them as they grow up. I wanted to see them grow in my eyes, so I could guide them to the way I want them to be. But the world is not favoring my  plan. It took me awhile to see that the world somehow is against me. I fought, we fought but it didn't happen.

As I moved from airport to airport to get to my destination, tears were falling from my eyes. I didn't realize that I confided to this woman who sat beside me. She assured me that things will be alright. This is the moment again that I began asking why some things that happened are just too hard to understand. I wanted to scream to let go of my frustration, and all I have was a heavy heart.

I made a promise.
Things will be alright.
Despite the sadness and longing, I always tell myself that things will be okay.

What if the world didn't have teachers?

What if the world didn't have teachers?

There'll be no doctors and nurses,

no Lawyers and Engineers.

No accountants and clerks,

to do paychecks or bills.

What if the world didn't have teachers?

There'll be no ABC's and numbers,

no grammar rules and punctuations.

No fractions and square roots,

Neither decimals or exponents.

But God made the teachers,

To help us learn every life's skills.

From knowing values and sentences,

Or to following rules and consequences.

I thank my teachers for all their teachings.

I thank them all for their legacies.

I thank them all for their sacrifices,

I thank them all, I thank them all.

Light and Shadows

I think this one is a language of an artist. Like the one used in painting, probably by using a charcoal or even a plain regular pencil. But I found these words "light and shadows" as a description of what all of us have been through in life and to the perspective of an artist, it is simply making the painting look perfect is to use a combination of lights and shadows. I'm not an artist (though I desire to be one) but I used to watch them paint on sidewalks and inside the malls and observed how they intricately brushed every detail of their subject before they hang it for display.   

We are our life's artist. When we started to sketch what our life is going to look like, we were like artists making dirty sketches on a pad. Just like an amateur who cannot decide on a subject, and he doodle on anything that he could think of.  Some of the lines he made are dark, some are light. And if we thought it is really really bad, we often toss it in the trash can.  A fact that tells us that life isn't always about luck, or serendipity or good fortune. It comes in all packages.

Be your life's artist. Paint your life's portrait to perfection using a good contrast of light and shadow. Look back with the choices that you made in the past that makes the real you today. Yes, those are your shadows that makes a good contrast of your life. Embrace it and be thankful because it make us more of who we are.

 The key to fulfillment is acceptance. Acknowledge the real us without any camouflage. 

COMICS

Photo credit: http://komiklopedia.wordpress.com

I was amazed by how my 8 years old daughter can draw close-to-perfect images of people's faces, to cartoon characters and even two dimensional objects with her own fine details in it. Now that I stayed home for quite a while, often I could see her with a bunch of paper and pencil in her hand sketching from time to time on just anything that she can think or things that she will notice on TV. At times, she will even ask me what I want her to draw and oftentimes, I told her to look around. Each moment I looked at her drawing, it brought me a picture in mind of my first notebook that has all my first sketches.

Back in time, before I started school, I was already fascinated by the pictures in the comic magazines - which are so popular at the time. I remember, some of my friends in high school would even cut classes because they just want to stay at the comic stand from across the road in our school, just to read their favorite comic story from name comics like Wakasan, Liwayway, Hiwaga, Aliwan, and many others. At that time, we would spend 25 cents to every comic magazine we read.

Photo credit: http://komiklopedia.wordpress.com

My mother would never give us spare money to read comics, and besides, my brother used to bring us a lot of comics from the city where he worked. I have no idea if he bought all those, or if it was given to him but we found ourselves grabbing and swapping each copy and reading it silently in our own corner of the house. That was the time that I started to recognize the difference in the way the pictures were illustrated in each stories. And they were different because they came from different artists. Mar T. Santana and Joey D. Celerio were my most favorite. Every time I read a comic magazine, I always looked up for their name in the title.

I missed those times that I could spend time reading my favorite comics. I searched the names of my favorite comic illustrator to find out that they were already gone. I just love their art, the way emotions are shown in each pictures, and lay out, and most of all, the consistency.

Well, as teacher I'm glad I know a little bit how to draw. And believe me, each time I make simple sketches on my white board it will definitely get the attention of my class. Thanks to the Maestros I mentioned above. They do not know me, but certainly they had an influence on me through their drawings.

I never had found reading comics as a waste of time before, and in fact, I personally believe it helped me with my sharp intuition,  imagination and creativity. And also, I was the fastest reader back in kindergarten!

One of my pencil sketches.

Photo credit:http://komiklopedia.wordpress.com

Dancing with the Vampires

Sounds creepy. Yeah, that is me in the picture wearing the stripe black and white bonnet dancing. But these folks who were with me were not blood suckers. We were just having fun this cold fall, but feel like winter night.

A party with Zombies and Vampires!

Life can sometimes be like "go where the wind goes". Remember how strong the super-storm Sandy was that hits the east coast lately? Kind of like that, but most of the devastations are not visible in the eye. It's more of inside, tearing down what's left for you to hold on. Our instinct tells us not to let go, and just continue to get a grip on anything. Anything that we thought are strong, and powerful to resist the seemingly insurmountable test of faith.

But what if at certain point in life, we just let go? What if we became tired and weak of gripping, and our arms and hands just gave up? I thought, it would just be safe to go where the wind goes. It should not be a safe travel for sure. It should be scary and dangerous. There could be lots of barriers. But I just thought, that after the wild and reckless, and destructive wind speed, everything will go back to normal. A relaxing breeze that we want to feel each time that life gives us heavy burden. That is why a lot of us wanted to be at a place where we could just feel the relaxing breath of fresh air. Where we are at peace. And we could think.

I love to dance like a debonair. A carefree. It surely is reviving. And yes, vampires do exist but is not in the picture of the ones we know. They are more human this time. They are more camouflaged. They suck not blood but the energy that we need to fight back with the storms in life. That is why I learn how to dance with them.