School Schedule, Linguistics and History

So first, let me break down my average day at school. Keep in mind that I only teach four hours a day, three in English and one in information communication technology. schedule

7:00 – arrive at school via bicycle and usually sit outside of the office, waiting for it to be opened. I will usually take this time to address any business on the internet I need to take care of.

7:30 – Flag Ceremony: singing of the national anthem, a pledge of allegiance, the singing of the provincial hymn and any announcements.

7:45-9:45-There are two class periods herein.

9:45-10:00 – coffee break for all the teachers

10:00-12 – classes

12-1 – I bike home for lunch and then return in time for classes.

1-4 – classes

Every class period is started with a mandatory prayer (usually an "Our Father" but depends on the teacher).

Either the teacher or I will first address the class. I have been trained in CLT method teaching, or Communicative Language Teaching, which transfers the role of the teacher onto the students themselves. While there is still lecture, we take time for group or pair work wherein students ideally practice English with each other. While make it a requirement that the teacher does not codeswitch, it is difficult to make sure the students are speaking only English. The co-teacher and I will take on different roles depending on the lesson plan, which we co-author before class. Below is a sample of a lesson plan we have used in the past with the second year. If this is the kind of thing that does not interest you, skip ahead.

Expressing Feelings, Opinions, Agreement, and Disagreement pg. 208

I. Objective

1. The students will be able to express agreement and disagreement by parallelism, determine and evaluate the objectives of a speaker, express and utilize variations of tone to express feelings and attitudes, use cohesive devices to make the flow of thought smooth and effortless.

II. Content and Materials

1. Content:

2. Materials: "Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles,

III. Procedures and Activities

1. Pre-reading

i. Post the song lyrics on the board with Manila paper. Play the students "Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles, have the students answer the question, "What is this song expressing? What is this song about? One person in the song says one thing and another one says another. Do the two people agree or disagree?" This is done by the PCV.

2. Reading

i. Discuss Key-points on 208. This is done by the co-teacher. After discussing parallel words, phrases and clauses, refer back to the song. Have the students identify the parallel clauses in the song.

ii. Using the activity in the book Five-Minute Activities, on page 45, "Ask each student to write down three things they like and dislike. They can decide whether they wish to refer to important things or to less important things, but what they write must be true. Do the same thing yourself. Rea out a point off your list and then add some information to it. For example? 'I don't like loud noises, particularly it they're not necessary. If it's necessary I can put up with it.' Encourage the students to ask the questions. Students then contribute their likes or dislikes. If time permits, students will take turns with a partner doing this same activity."

3. Post-Reading

i. Activities 1-3 on pg. 209, students work individually.

ii. Evaluation for day 1: Quiz – 5 questions to test the 75% comprehension rate. This is administered by the co-teacher.

iii. Assignment: Have students pair up for the project tomorrow and bring art materials by pair.

--------------------------------------------------------2nd Day-----------------------------------------

i. Students will work together in groups of 2 to develop a travel brochure for San Juan and include places to eat, stay and sites to see. After the brochures are created, the students will share them with the class. Afterwards, the students will pair up with different partners and roleplay. One student will be a travel agent and the other will be a tourist interested in traveling to San Juan. The students will take turns running through the dialogue on pg. 209.

II. Evaluation

1. Students will answer the questions on pg. 210. These will be turned in.

III. Assignment

The format is officially from the department of education (DepEd). The nice thing about all the Edu volunteers using a standardized format is that we are currently building a database of lesson plans for future volunteers, something we do not yet have.

I have also been reading a lot. I started a book last night called The History of the Filipino People. Give me a dry history book any day, I have no why idea why I love this stuff. The following is a generalized description of the people of the Visayan region,

The Visayan is a hedonist. Give him a jug of tuba [coconut wine] and a piece of dried fish and he will sing the wilderness into Paradise. He is a lover like the Tagalog, but he expresses his consuming passion in music, not in poetry. Thus, armed with a banduria, a ukulele or a guitar, he forgets his sorrows, even his hunger, if he is poor, by caressing the strings of his musical instrument and singing to its accompaniments. He may not know the difference between a do and a mi on paper, but he can put together the notes of the scale to produce lilting, coquettish music. History of the Filipino People by Teodoro A. Agoncillo, pg. 18.

Yeah, I know I'm lucky to be in this region. Other interesting points of interest are in language. Looking at the history and origins of words here was particularly revelatory. There are words from Malay, Chinese, Sanskrit and English predominantly. The Malay is related to the "primitive Austronesian" languages that spread from the SE Asian archipelago and spread south through Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and many Pacific islands such as Hawaii and Guam (not sure on the last one). Interestingly, the word for umbrella in Austronesian is pajung, or payong in Tagalog (and Visayan). However, in the Cabalionon subdialect that they speak here in my town (a mix of Visayan and Surigaonon), they replace a "y" with a "j", which makes the subdialect here at my site truer to its origins as a branch of the ancient Austronesian language rather than Tagalog or many other dialects here in the Philippines.

Example:

Primitive Austronesian	Tagalog (Filipino)	Cabalionon (Visayan & Surigaonon)	English
pajung	payong	pajong	umbrella

I love etymology. Also, before the Spanish came, the ancient Filipinos (around the same time as the Greeks and Egyptians) used a written alphabet based on Sanskrit. From what I have learned while studying under the tutelage of Professor Gustafson, this is not unlike the written language of the Khmer people of Cambodia. Human geography is awesome! I just want to give a shout-out to all my history profs for making me the geek I am today.

Also, like the Mauri of New Zealand (of Malay ancestry), the peoples of the Philippines were adorned in tattoos, especially those in the Visayan region. In fact, the Spanish called the Visayan Islands "islands of the painted people" at first. Unlike my experience in New Zealand, wherein I actually saw some Mauri with facial and body tattoos, I have yet to see anyone here with such adornments.

Reading this book is very enlightening. I came to the Philippines looking for "Asia," whatever that means. Disillusioned, I spent a longtime looking for some kind of preconceived paradigm that simply does not exist here. The Philippines is not Asia, it is simply the Philippines. This book excites me; it helps me be observant of the marvelous culture here that I simply put aside or disregarded if it didn't fit into my concept of what was "Asian." From a post-colonial identity perspective, I was eager to see and learn what was fundamentally Spanish within the reconstructed Filipino identity. By eager to learn I mean I was overexuberant in assigning influences with absolutely no basis or foundation in my categorization. I was, and maybe still am, a sophomoric (in the literal sense) student of history. But at least I am sharpening my teeth. Studying post-colonial identity, I am learning, is not a simple "us and them" equation. This kind of assumption is, I believe, a Marxist paradigm of historiography (and one I was quite attached to in school). But to quote Professor Adamo, “it's more complicated than that.” As I have said in my post, this is a new century. It's time for new perspectives. Many people believe that history is stagnant and unchanging. The way we view history changes everyday! I am living it and it is thrilling!