Setting of Expectations

I still remember when I was in first year and my teacher told us to introduce ourselves. I was so excited to know my new classmates. I knew that some of them would become dear to me. I was eager to hear their stories: their names, the school where they came from and their expectations in college life.

Today is different, I am no longer a student who is eager to listen to my classmate's stories. Now, I am the one who is setting my house rules and facilitate the class activities. 

In order for me to know the students schema (prior knowledge) and to test their communication skills, I asked them to speak in front of the class, introduce their selves and share their stories. After everybody has told their own dramas, I gave them papers, markers and crayons. I asked them to draw their expectations towards me, to their classmates and to the school management. 

I felt their excitement, their eagerness to complete the task, their desires to excel and to show what they've got from their high school academic training. Below are the pictures of my CTU 1st year Education class during  the setting of expectations activity:

This activity helped me discover who among the class has the spirit of a good leader, who among them shows the spirit of cooperation, who among them remains calm and compose, who among them has the talent in arts, who among them are good communicators and above all it helped me know where to begin in teaching them based on their schema.

XX Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda

XX Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

 I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear with the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my  love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

My BSIT students at SJIT

One of the memories I cant forget was my stay with Saint Joseph Institute of Technology. Its in SJIT where I had my first teaching experience and met my talented and intelligent students. This video was their gift to me when I left the school last 2008.

I miss you guys.... I hope to see you again....:)