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

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.

Choices

Picture Credit:www.scoop.it

When we were little, we often got punished and reprimanded of breaking the rules or not following the things that we are told to do. And as a young child, we used to feel being rejected, or unimportant after getting the punishments. And some people are so eager to get over this stage of having a parent who’s going to watch every single mishap they've made.

I think I had the best childhood because of the presence of my siblings and parents, yet those moments that I was being punished for things that I've done wrong weren't worth telling. Like for instance, being paddled by a broom because of acting so badly when I was not permitted to go watch movies on a weekend. Yeah, it is not worth telling. But here I am, as a parent and as an adult missing those moments where someone I looked up would tell me how awesome or how awful the choices I made.

Living life is always about making choices. Nobody can figure out whether the choices we’re making are the right one’s for us except us. And it is very difficult to tell especially if you’re a person who wanted to make sure that the way ahead is laid right for you. These are uncertainties, a force that holds you away to where you believe you’re heading.

It is very hard to make the right choices. I made lots of wrong ones in my life, but here is

what I learned over the course of time – have faith.

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. 

Time is as Precious as Gold

Photo credit: Mona Liza Letigio "Sunset by the Lake"

There is always time for everything. Life isn't always busy as we thought it is. The true reason why we tend to forget important things that we wanted to do is because of the fact that when unusual events happen in our life, it will stir up our thoughts and will make us forget the priorities. And so we ended up forgetting important dates and meetings and even the much needed appointments. And even forget about the scheduled family dates that we highlighted in our calendar. Things can easily mess up our minds especially when unpleasant and unexpected things happen.

Believe me, I and my beloved wife forgot about our special day several times! But we just smiled when we found out and admit the fact that we were so caught up with what all of the things happening around us. Some situations can just get way in our heads and can blow us up sometimes, and I'm sure everyone experience that. Is it a sad fact? Yes it is. To justify in our case, at least to us, we have two girls who are looking up at us and students that we need to attend each day so that we have to keep up with everything that we do. We struggled to do our routine each time, and responsibilities seem to keep adding up each day. And I thought, life is always like this if we would not take control and put our hand on it.

Time is precious because we can never do things that we were supposed to do when the time is gone. I tend to say this all the time;  "I was supposed to do this yesterday," and the same line I am going to say the next day and it becomes my favorite line. While the work keeps on adding and adding each day in our life, it is important to think of the priorities and the ones that we missed. And I realized that inorder to do this, a simple quite moment is needed. Take a mild walk in the neighborhood, or by going into your backyard to breathe some fresh air. Even getting into your room and having a little silence to yourself is proven effective. Well, at least to me. I find it important to take sometime of silence to listen to my thoughts especially when situations seem so deranged. And after that, I can go back to work again.

Time is gold, so that we can never let certain circumstances ruin our plans. We can never go back to the time that was wasted but we can always go back to the plans that we did not accomplish and start all over again. Thanks to our God for the ability to reflect, the ability to re-focus and the strength to do the things He has planned for us. :)

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

Happy Halloween, 2012!



My daughters, Rossie and Riza trick or treating on halloween, 2012.

We celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday 5 days ago, and I thought, "Yeah, right. Halloween is here, then, Thanksgiving holiday. Then, christmas." By the time we gathered together to celebrate my daughter's birthday, and I know it has become a culture to us to come to our house in halloween costume, especially with the little kids and eat dinner together and then, we were reminded that yes, after the halloween, all the holidays are in the corner.

Nearly 8 years ago, we celebrated our All Soul's Day and All Saint's Day with our families in the Phil. Although there was no glamour of wearing the most expensive costumes but we enjoyed visiting our deceased family and relative in their graveyard, and some folks are actually partying with them bringing food and drinks in their grave. In the night of Nov. 1st, we used to gather together as a family and offer prayers to the souls of our departed families. After the prayer, we come and eat together as a family and welcome kids and neighbors treat and tricking and have them eat and play with us.

Now that I am thousands of miles away from home, all I can do is just recall my memories as I saw the kids treat or tricking in the neighborhood. I felt a sudden sadness while I watched my girls knocking at my neighbor's door. At that moment, I decided to go with my girls to the main street and be with the rest of the kids in town enjoying the display for halloween. It is something that cannot replace my childhood experience during halloween but at least, I have them experience the moment.

Lately

This is one part of the Rock Hill Riverwalk. We used to come 

here on late afternoon or early evening to relax and take a 

gentle walk and feeling the cool breeze of air. So relaxing, that 

you'll forget the stress the day brings.

Things are falling into place...I guess. Just being thankful that despite of the too many unstoppable, out of hand circumstances, at least, me and my wife are still on our sanity. Well, our two lovely girls helped us a lot to overcome those feelings of losing our hope and or not being in control of our emotions. To those people who knows us and knew what we've been through lately would surely understand what I am talking about.

It is only like this. Life is always about finding the way through good times and bad times. You have to deal to every situations. You have to think and be logical on dealing with something big. In other words, there is no place to being too emotional. It is not helping. Maybe it would help by bringing out the heartache inside, other than that, no. I realized that when you are facing a situation that is beyond your means to control, all you have to do is to raise your hand. Not in defeat, but surrendering it to the one who is omnipotent, the one who is in control of everything. There is no such thing as being hopeless, because there is always hope. I learned that a lot. And it is always to our advantage if we look at things positively, that there is always a reason to everything that happened. I am a big believer of that.

Just keep the faith. :)