Teaching

The other day at a meetup teachers shared how long they were in service, how they learned how to use a computer and how they started to use technology in the classroom. I had to get up myself and tell my story.

I told them that I was the youngest in the whole group when it came to academic teaching. I had taught a term in my alma mater. I was tasked to teach OrgCom. I had 2 major tasks: (1) Re-do the syllabus from scratch; and (2) test how to use Google Apps for Edu in the classroom. It was a herculean task for me since it was my first time to teach an actual class. The only other teaching experience I had then was substituting at my friend's nursery school and doing trainings at work. I realized then how hard it is to be a teacher since (1) you have to be at least 2 steps ahead of your students; (2) you have to study non-stop; and (3) you need to manage your time to a tee. Boy, it was really hard especially since I also had a full-time job.

It was my brother who taught me how to use a computer. I think I was about 9 years old then. He eventually enrolled me in logo programming class and gave me his old desktops as hand me downs. I was already in college when my parents got me my own desktop. I've been through the green-screen monitor and floppy disks. Hard drives were not available yet back then so you had to make sure you have at least 2 drives so you can run MS-DOS then replace it with the app and then use the other drive to share your files. Eventually my brother handed me down another computer so I had a monochrome screen which was later on replaced with a colored monitor (it cost a whooping PhP17K!!!). I learned how to use a Mac when I was doing a freelance job at Shell when I was still in college.

I was lucky my alma mater was the first school to get connected to the internet so that's where I learned. It wasn't really taught in class, but I learned mostly through trial and error and by asking questions from friends. I guess it was really curiosity that really helped me get through my second task when I ended up in the academe. And I found kindred spirits at the teacher meetup when they shared how they learned how to use the computer and how they eventually found a way to use technology in the classroom.

Spending a lot of time with teachers in the last year made me admire teachers more. It's a profession that's purely motivated by passion to serve others. It's also a huge responsibility to be tasked to shape the minds of students.

Hopefully someday I'd be able to teach in the academe again :)