MAGIS

A GOOD TEN YEARS AFTER

Therese Pelias, Grade 7 Guidance Counselor

Posted Friday, 22-Jul-2005 1:33 PM

     A good ten Junes ago, I was a twenty year old fresh graduate trying to make out the best in what I found myself doing just two months after college. I was then trying to ask the question, “How long will I last?” just like every Xavier employee who has walked up the stage to receive a Service Recognition award and everyone else still around who keep on marching back to the same stage.

      I was actually wondering what they saw in me. I was not exactly sure if I had impressed Mr. Paco Maramag in my panel interview then although I can vividly recall the welcoming smile of Ms. Jinna Jayme. I brought with me the confidence of doing a teaching demonstration as I had impressed my teacher in the elective, Principles and Techniques of Teaching, just a few weeks back. But then realizing that I was going to do it in front of teachers made me a bit jittery. It helped that Mr. Danny Juson, who saw me just outside the Faculty Workroom, dropped me an encouraging line as I was fixing my visual aids. I supposed I landed myself on some friendly ground.

      That ground, of course, eventually became my home exactly a day after my college graduation. What a beautiful blessing to have suddenly found the next road right there and then!

      But then the road had not been easy. There was so much adjustment to go through. I was a student and a teacher at the same time as I got myself busy gorging on everything I knew I had to learn. I found myself enjoying the students but managing them well took some time to master. The greatest challenge I had was my soft voice and my timidity, two things I tried my best to overcome even as my hands were full with the demands of teaching. I guess it was by design that God gave me students with special needs who brought out the heart of teaching in me. Oh and they really made me exercise my patience! I remember being a regular visitor of Ms. Joney Pusta, the Grade 3 Guidance Counselor then whose tips in handling the students proved to be very helpful.

      And so that same heart wondered for quite a moment if she had found the right home. One afternoon, in the midst of writing my lesson plan, I remember lifting my pen and realizing that this was not the kind of writing I used to do a year before. Creative writing was my kind of stuff and downsizing my vocabulary took out every creative word out of me. My doubts and reservations were not helped by the fact that I was young and had a college degree that could bring me to any field I wish to enter.

      But no matter how I put it, I could not bring myself to work behind a desk doing some task as administering psychological tests and interpreting them. The corporate world did not seem to be for me either. I believe it was my experience with the students that helped me answer the question of staying. Having discovered a passion for writing earlier on, I realized that teaching extended that passion to become a passion to show students the wonderful world of words and their ability to find their own voice.

      One Grade 3 student of mine way back in 1996 stood up one time without being called. We were studying the dictionary then and he suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! Now I get it. I now know what the guide words are for!” The brilliance in his eyes is something that I will never forget. And after him there have been countless other students who have shown me very good reasons to stay. These students came my way in the next six years, which found me in the various roles of Reading Teacher, Class Adviser and Student Paper Moderator.

      Teaching brought me a mixed bag of experiences. I had the chance to teach the best readers and the most creative of writers. Wouldn’t you find it inspiring to hear your students dream of doing well so that they can help others in the future? Well, I did have such students and some of them even struggled with me through two school years of producing a school paper alongside competing with other schools and eventually winning in the first Student Catholic Mass Media Awards in 2001.

      Being a class adviser brought me closer to my students and gave me different roles to play with them, that of being a friend and a second mother. I had fun moments collecting pictures of our Appreciation Days and Christmas parties but moments like not being able to deliver my own lesson plan in own advisory class gravely disappointed me. I guess it was a time to realize I had spread myself too thinly and that there was nothing much in the well of my own being. I was back again to the same question, “How long will I last?”

      When big questions come, I always use all means to find the big answers. I was at a crossroads at twenty-six and I was storming the heavens with prayers once again. It didn’t help that a lot of my friends had left Xavier by this time and that other reasons to leave had also come into the picture. Despite those, God’s big answer was for me to stay and He led me to an office this time – the Guidance Counselor’s office. Counseling has come to show me a different kind of passion – that of helping others.

      I believe that, in life, there are only two things that can possibly happen to you: something you planned and prepared for or something that dropped out of the blue. What I find myself doing today is a mixture of both. I might have shied away from the glory of the teacher’s platform but the heart of teaching is still in me. This time, my lesson plan consists of real life experiences and values that have yet to be discovered for their own worth. Just a week ago, I was talking to two High School students who passed by. We were happily exchanging life lessons – from me to them and vice-versa. That is actually quite typical right now. Xavier School has allowed me to grow in more ways than one. I have been a part of many a student’s growth as much as they have all been a part of mine. Benefiting from such a cycle of growth is what I see as what is most gratifying in being an educator far more than prestige or any material gain that I get from choosing this career.

      Xavier School is not just friendly ground after all. It is fertile soil. There’s just so much to be thankful for! Here’s to anticipating where my growth will lead me in the years to come…

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