“Yan ang Buhay.”

October 15, 2012

I remember my last serious conversation with Jefry, he asked me for reasons why my students like me. I replied, with a serious intonation and poker faced expression that I don’t pretty much care about teaching content, in fact, I don’t care whether my students know how to separate or even locate subject and predicate in a sentence. What is more essential for me is that my students would learn life. I was – dead serious when I said those words. “Nagtuturo kasi ako ng buhay.” Then we had that 3 second awkward silence and dead air until he finally said, “hmmm, that’s our big difference, I teach content and I pretty much don’t care about teaching life. Hindi ako nagtuturo ng buhay.”

During one of those times in the morning, I chose to share that piece of thought with Richard few days after that conversation with Jef. I was, somehow expecting to get, I don’t know, maybe a substantial support from him about my claim. Apparently, what I got was a laugh trip which lasted for about a minute or so, with all the cute wrinkles in his eyes jumping up and about in his thick Arabian eyebrows. Just as when I thought I was being serious with sharing my personal advocacy of teaching students about life- there he was- laughing. Arrgghh! I don’t know what I felt that day. It was confusion and weirdness at the same time. His reaction made me think as if there is something wrong with my advocacy like it was a fool for a teacher to teach about life.  

And so, moments later he would mock me, as he always does, saying those lines, “nagtuturo kasi ako ng buhay” over and over at different times or he would just say, “yan ang buhay”. He was, indeed, mocking me! How dare he put a joke out of a very serious notion about teaching and life!