Saturday, November 17, 2007

Reklamo-fest

See, there's this teacher of mine...(I'm not mentioning names, so don't force me coz it's tempting)

And she doesn't know how to teach. Like every meeting she just reads the book, talks to herself and do some kind of sermon. Everything she says is already there in our book; she just translates it to Bisaya "so we'd understand further". The examples she gives are mediocre and they're stuff we learned in first year.

You know autism? Yeah, she kinds of has that. Coz autistic people's mirror neurons(those that mirror memories to recognize a familiar face or event) are broken so they can't look at people in the eye and everything is new to them. She doesn't establish eye contact with us. NOT.EVER. You know what she does? She just stares outside the window and talks and talks. She even doesn't face half of the class.

She uses a lot of time writing stuff on the board. We're left with nothing to do on our seats but wait, sometimes check our lip gloss, or, you know, send SMS messages.

She's as erratic as a tornado; she flings from one mood and another. One minute she's strict coz she has the oh-I'm-so-high-wtf-I'm-a-teacher attitude and the next she'll be like an orphaned pup.

Here's what I don't like the most. 5% of her grading comes from attendance (truants rally!) and a student gets a plus 2 on his/her final grade if s/he has a perfect attendance. First, this is supposed to be bawal. It's in the handbook baby. And i really told her that. When she heard it, she looked annoyed and told us, "This is academic freedom." Well, i dunno what is the scope of academic freedom so i just didn't push further. The I informed her that it was in the handbook that grading attendance is really bawal but she said it was okay. She even told us "Ayaw nyo ng plus?" ("You don't want to get bonus points?") My classmates mellowed. (They feigned?) they wanted the plus badly. Gawd.

Personally, I think she's doing too much. The 2point incentive may be okay, it's like a reward anyway. But the 5% is too much. It's like she's insecure of the attendance that she has to pay people to be there. See, if the student sees enough incentive enough in the class to actually go to class, then s/he will attend classes.

Last semester, I had a class under Mr. Rex Rola. He is a horror terror teacher in terms of grading. Like, last sem out of the four sections he handled, only four people passed his subject. Whew. (I'm darn lucky.) He is a brilliant brilliant man, with an exceptional mind and beautiful lecture skills. He never checked the attendance. Sometimes I'd go to class tapos ako lang isa ang estudyante. He didn't care. He even still lectured like the classroom was full. See, people who really go to class are the people who really are interested in the class.

I remember. I always felt sorry everytime I had to absent in Mr. Rola's class. I always learned something every day. I always felt like a wiser person every time I step out of F403. But now? I dunno. With her, it's an eternal reklamo-fest.

She makes schooling get in the way of my education.



PS. Things here are based on my reality. Get it? MY.REALITY. Besides, who told you to be here?

2 comments:

madnote said...

Lol.
I remember one prof of mine who used to drone to class whatever she has written in her book which is also our main textbook.
shes like 70 and she talks like 1 word per 4 seconds

MayaFlaminda said...

Hi,

Why not take her style as a challenge? Perhaps asking questions in class can make a difference.