Scope and Limitation

The title probably won’t encapsulate what I’m about to post, but I can’t think of anything better.

Cris and I were talking – and she mentioned how she had a talk with her school’s principal. Apparently, the brass recognize her as an asset to the school and they wanted to make sure the “politics/issues” (which I’ll get into) weren’t burning her out.

There are so many things I want to say about all this ¹ both directly related to the “issues,” as well as an overall parallelism with other aspects of life that I don’t know where to begin. So forgive me if I jump around trying to explain different points along the way.

All organizations have political issues, that much is a given. But with Cris’ case it’s because people (mostly new teachers) take issue of her seeming to be the “favorite” of her superiors (among other things). It seems people will find ways to find faults in anyone out of spite… even if it means inventing stories or mangling the truth. This I know all too well. So it pains me to know that someone I love dearly is experiencing something similar – especially knowing how good a person she is ² If it was me, there’d still be some reason to diss me since I can be quite the asshole

To say that Cris is an excellent teacher is an understatement… I’d say she’s too good for her own good. And it saddens me that some people, instead of being happy for her, or trying to follow her example, are finding excuses to justify their mediocrity.

To demonstrate how good she is, I will go through as best I can what I think are notable things she has done (because I rarely get the chance to brag about my GF publicly). I’ll also mention some facts about her so that when you absorb this list as a whole, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

1. She won the Josefa Segovia award ³ Not necessarily an academic award, but it’s highest distinction one could get from Poveda on her last year; a time when her family was going through a tremendous emotional/financial strain from her father being put in prison.
2. Because of said family situation, she put herself through college in UP; paying for her own tuition by tutoring after school hours. ⁴ Her older sister and brother both went to Ateneo; supported their Mom and relatives.
3. She is probably the first student-teacher that was invited to present in an educational convention (Bohol).
4. She likes reading academic journals for kicks… and she already has a lesson plan included in one RAP journal (her lesson plan from the Bohol conference)
5. She also likes attending seminars during her free time during college for the same reason.
6. Her course was SpEd (Special Education)… which is no fucking joke. It’s difficult enough to teach normal kids… what more those with learning disabilities.
7. She won the highest distinction in her college as well. Not only that, this was an award which is traditionally granted to the two best student teachers… but in her case, her professors lobbied that she should get the award alone; that’s how far ahead her performance was from the “other candidate.”
8. On her first year of teaching, she was invited to present again ⁵ Just like in #3 (in Bacolod) and was sponsored by the school. Some faculty members took offense with the fact that a new teacher was given that special treatment by the school.
9. She’s got a lesson plan which is going to be included in the 2nd volume of Developing Comprehension in Young Readers. ⁶ Assuming they get funding to get it published I believe it’s the same lesson she presented in Bacolod.
10. The third time she was invited to present (Palawan), ⁷ Most of these conferences are really organized by UP she took a leave from school and did everything out of her own pocket just so no one would “take offense.”
11. She has ghost-written a part of a “Teacher’s Manual;” a grade 6 language arts textbook in UP and will ghost-write another one in the works. The significance of this is that her name will not be on the credits since it’ll be under a known educator’s name… but just goes to show she’s got the chops to be writing for known educators.

And for some other trivia:

1. She lives in Avalon… literally a spit away from Xavier School, which offered her a higher salary; but she turned it down because she resonated more with the method of education her current school advocates.
2. She was given the most troublesome student this year (notorious with the parents and faculty) – that student is now in the honor roll.
3. Her advisory class’ favorite activity is book-reading. An inclination they developed only because they were under her. Where have you seen a class where you could use “no book-reading because you have to practice your DANCE” as a punishment!? ⁸ Hell, even that troublesome student started to like reading out of peer pressure hahahaha
4. Where you’d normally see “schools over, it’s summer yay!” in student’s facebook/IM/etc. statuses, her students instead have “I miss grade 2” status messages. Now that, I’m not sure is a good thing; because she might be breeding a bunch of nerds hahahaha.

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Allow me to digress a bit mention this: I’m listing these things down and all I can think of is “Damn; isn’t she awesome!?” I mean quite literally; comparing her to any other woman… how can you compete with her? Well fine, there are no rules/standards as far as lust/affairs are concerned. But as far as the “ideal girl” goes, seriously, there’s just no contest.

And I don’t even need to be biased to say all this, people who really know her would probably agree with me. The only things that aren’t going for her are her height, her clumsiness, and that she can’t sing to save her life. ⁹ If you’re a friend, you can ask me for the password to watch the video 🙂 All of which are things that us men don’t really mind.

A naive, noisy, nosy, whining, jealous, high-maintenance bitch ¹⁰ Most women have at least three of those traits at a time … now that we do mind; and Cris isn’t like that as well… well probably jealous (and insecure); but that’s it. I have seriously hit the jackpot!

And to prove it’s not the bias… part of Cris’ insecurity/jealousy is because I acknowledge what I found “good” in past “relationships” I’ve had. Simply put, I give credit where credit is due to the women I’ve been with. So should we break up (knock on wood), I actually have to admit that the next woman I end up with should be appealing for a whole new set of reasons – because she’s really going to have a tough time if she had to measure up to Cris using the same traits I love about her. Let this blog post be a statement of that fact/truth.

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Ok, going back; having read all of that… here’s a person who beyond any doubt, loves teaching. Not “love” as in “I enjoy teaching” but really LOVE. The way she sees education… that’s passion.

I’ve always been a practical person. So I see the difference between our perspectives when it comes to professions. I like my job a lot; I’m good at it, it’s very rewarding, etc. But I chose it not because it’s what I prefer to be doing. If I had followed my real “passion,” I’d be a starving musician.

Given that Cris is more of the latter (passion over practicality), I’m glad of our combination… there has to be one practical thinker in the family. Someone’s gotta pay the bills 🙂

So going back to the “issue” it’s these very same things that are making other new teachers dislike her. When she gives in her requirements early (or on time, never late) it allegedly puts pressure on the others who procrastinate. And they think hindi siya nakikisama.

I don’t know about you, but the fact that there are people who think that way is kinda depressing. Has professionalism sunk to an all-time low that being mediocre is now the norm; and that anyone who does well is branded as inconsiderate of others? When did “doing well” become synonymous with “trying to impress?”

What about doing something you could be proud of… or even doing what’s expected of you… or at the very least doing what you were paid to do? Any reason apart from just “doing something for the sake of doing it.”

Look, I can totally understand people not being paid their worth… I can even understand if they purposefully “underperform” if they think that is the case. I will not judge them for that. You’re not being paid enough, so you don’t work as hard; perfectly understandable. That’s your decision and I will accept that.

But to begrudge people who want to do their best regardless of what they’re being paid – are you fucking kidding me? This is the teaching profession for chrissake!!! I wouldn’t want my kids to end up like those non-contributing zeros who do “just enough.” (And it’s not even “enough,” really)

The teaching profession, IMHO is really a sort of thing you should get into only because you love it… just like music. No one should get into teaching because its a job – and certainly shouldn’t perform simply because “it’s a job.”

Unfortunately, becoming a teacher (especially of lower grade levels) is too easy a job to get. ¹¹ Almost as easy as getting into a call-center Mind you, my GF is a teacher, so I say this fact with no intention of belittling the “true teachers” of the world. But I’m sure those teachers are just as frustrated that there are a lot of people who are teachers simply because they have nowhere else to go.

So to all mediocre teachers out there, whoever you may be: please do the world a favor and change jobs. The educational world cannot afford to have people like you. Why not go to a call-center instead? It pays much more and you don’t get to destroy the youth’s future by imparting your half-assed values. Hell, get into the IT industry if you want; we’re mostly quantity-over-quality-based anyways.

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Now we segue to overall perspective with regards to doing a job… and doing it well. Which brings me to my job. Or at least how I approach it.

I said earlier that I totally understand if people aren’t being paid well enough. But personally, even if that were the case, I believe there really should be a “floor” as to how lousy you should perform. The underlying reason I state this has already been explained in a past post, so I will not expound further.

Being a designer/programmer, it always mattered to me that my name was on my work… meaning if I submitted something… people know I made it. If it sucks… they won’t say “Don’t worry about it; Carlo’s just not doing what he’s truly capable of”, instead they’ll think I suck… period. And I’ve always treated my work that way. At the end of the day, at the very least, whatever I show should be something I can put my name behind. And whatever mistakes that came with it – would be mistakes I could own up to.

But this approach is only applied to my forte. If it’s anything else, I prefer to avoid responsibility hehehehe.

The reason I don’t volunteer to do stuff in other groups, etc. is because I don’t like inefficient processes. Being a programmer, I, by nature, try to be efficient with processes. So if there’s something needed, and I’m asked to give a suggestion… I usually try to think of a suggestion that not only patches it in the meantime… but solves it so that we don’t have to worry about it the next time.

Simply put, I only try to fix things if I know they can be fixed… if I can see that they cannot be fixed, I don’t bother trying. Because really, why would you try to fix what cannot be fixed – are you an idiot or something?

This “approach” is perfectly exemplified with my years of being with Bukas Palad. And I’m not knocking my own group, I love it and what it stands for. But objectively speaking, just like any other organization/group, it isn’t perfect. And I’ve tried to “fix” what I thought was in my capacity to fix… to the point where I just gave up and decided “fuck it, why should I worry about all this other shit when I can just sing and enjoy myself”

I admit its selfish, but I don’t apologize for being that way. As far as logistics goes, there a lot of “systems” that have been requested from me – which I have already put in place. From calendaring, to forms, to archiving, etc. But I can tell you this: those systems are only utilized the first few weeks… then they forget about it. Then everything slowly degrades to traditional (i.e. dinosaur) methods, becomes hard to manage, then they ask if I can do something “high tech” to make things easier.

At this point, I can confidently say: “There is already a system in place that addresses that concern… I made it years ago remember?” if only you’d use it. ¹² Or “if only you’d use it again… and KEEP ON USING IT HENCEFORTH They sometimes return to it and everything’s ok… then they forget about it again… wash, rinse, repeat.

It certainly may be a case of teaching an old-dog new tricks; some people will never get the hang of it no matter what they do. Or it maybe that they simply don’t like doing things that way… and I totally accept that… I really do. But all the same; should it really be MY problem at that point? Of course not 🙂 What I did clearly didn’t work since you stopped using it, so why bother me with the same problem again and again? Maybe some other person could solve it right?

Also, they make it seem like only I can handle such systems (that it’s too complicated, etc.), when I designed the thing to be accessible to all members; I’ve even got step-by-step instructions on how to use them. And seriously, you have time to Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Multiply, Friendster, whatever the fuck else social network it is but you don’t have time to visit the messageboard’s members-only section and look for the files you’re asking (from me) yourself?

So these were the things that usually would go through my head when I still gave a damn about the business/political side of the group. Then I just decided one day that I’d rather not get any gray hairs over it. I would try to start seeing things “half-full” as it were.

Instead of feeling bad about the stuff I see lacking, why not just focus on the good stuff… and so I did exactly that and just focused on the reason I joined the group: to sing. And as far as singing goes, that I don’t mind offering help wherever I can (or am needed). But the other stuff, unless they promise to actually enforce what they ask me to do, I’d be the first to suggest that they rely on someone else.

Why do I mention all this? Because this reinforces my suggestion about work that people should and shouldn’t be doing. If you can’t take responsibility of doing a “job” the best you can, why bother? You’d just be a wasteful non-asset. With BP its not quite the same since no one gets paid for what they do, so usually the frustration is from the people who try to do their best but aren’t appreciated for it.

But with the policital issues in Cris’ school, this is very relevant. An organization could’ve hired someone who actually is good at what they do – instead of waste a whole bunch of time and resources paying for someone who isn’t doing their best for whatever reason. Again, while it would be nice, it’s not the obligation of an employer to look after you. If ever they do, you have to be worth looking after. And at the end of the day, at least I know the school has got Cris’ back. Favorite na kung favorite, eh if you were an employer, and you see her work the way she does (and how much the kids improve because of her – which statistically bodes well for the school)… how can someone like that not be your favorite?

To end, I’d like to repost this video I posted a while back which encapsulates what I think Cris should be saying to those people dissing her: