Teach Me If You Can

UP High annually celebrates the Know Your School Day which is an event that gives the teachers a break from their noble careers. Students get a chance to substitute as faculty and staff of the University for a day. It is also a good way to know how people work in school. You get a chance to know UP High’s system of teaching. The KYSD has been a tradition in UP High and every year it gets better and better. Actually the KYSD runs for a couple of days. It isn’t only for a day. Sometimes runs for two to three days. It also happened before that the KYSD was held in a week. But the duration doesn’t matter because the success of the KYSD, with the help of the Student Council, is consistent. In my four years in UP, I never had a chance to be a teacher in the KYSD probably because I never had the passion for teaching even if my mom, dad and aunt are teachers. I didn’t want to teach. I always wanted to just be a student - a learning student. The first time I experienced this event, I was amazed because my classmates were so in to becoming little Madam Gallos, Sir Montaños, Madam Logartas and many more cute things. Of course, the freshies were the devotees of this event. Imagine the excitement we felt. It was an honor to be a teacher. You’ll be of higher rank over your classmates so you can scold them for being noisy like you when you are a part in class. You have authority over them. If I know, almost everyone wanted to become a teacher for a day. It was always good to know that at our very young and feeble age, we had the guts and skills to teach people of our generation. I can still remember Richard and Juna teaching us Geometry. At first we didn’t really understand the existence of the arc. But they really tried to explain how the arcs work and they were successful with it. How did we know? Well, we became third year students. Somehow, I remembered Aiko as a student-teacher in Social Science and Computer. (I’m not sure of that) I don’t know but Aiko loves teaching SocSci. It was good news for us because Sir Montaño doesn’t come to class that regular that’s why we can have a good discussion of the history of the world. I think Grace tried to be a Biology teacher even if she’s better at Math.April Rhiz was my seatmate during Chemistry time so I witnessed her preparations for her Chemistry discussion about RedOx. Lately, Chairman and Jann discussed a topic for Calculus called Related Rates. While writing this, a flashback of Ella teaching PE came into my mind. She gave a joke one time about her application for the certain subject and we laughed at her. The next day, we were having PE with Ms. Sarmago. But after two years, Ella felt that she was not contented with the PE teacher position so this year she made sure that this year she would be the Professional Division Chairperson and she did! It feels different when your co-student is teaching you. Sometimes you really don’t understand what they’re trying to teach you. But most of the time, we understand the new lessons because the new teachers know what we find hard about the lesson so they make sure that we don’t struggle. We also are stimulated to learn because we are most likely on the same line of thinking especially on the choice of words. Student-teachers can express more what they’re trying to say. We don’t easily get bored because they know when to throw jokes and ice-breakers. But after the day, we still get back to our student instincts. We still play and laugh our hearts out. I still prefer being taught than to teach.