The past few days have been engaging as far as the academe is concerned.
First, there's the teacher who recorded herself describing her students as "ugaling iskwater" while the second promised how he will feel good if his students offed themselves.
It is interesting that many colleagues have sided with the first accompanied with a hashtag while I have yet to see any for the Skeletor-esque professor. I will avoid taking sides as I do not know the context of the videos.
Truth to tell, I have no desire to watch the first as expressing frustration and disgust is common in the faculty room. What else is new? But for the second, judging from the video which seemingly was recorded in secret by a student, I watched it as I wanted to hear his exact words which were uttered in Cebuano, Tagalog, and English so I only understood 2/3 of it.
For those following my exploits as a teacher, you know how I love teasing my students if only because I will protect them still, sasaluhin ko pa rin sila. My teaching philosophy stems from appreciating their hard work more. For as long as they gave it their all and submitted on time, they will be moving up next semester. Perhaps if a student records me secretly as I tease them, I would go viral as well
As much as students can send you off the edge, as teachers, we must learn to build a barrier to prevent us from leaping even if we wanted to. We are still expected to have an immeasurable pisi. The first time I heard the expression, I thought it was spelled as PC. I said, "That does not make sense. How can a personal computer be long?" But I digress.
But because we are human, we can be exasperated which we can share with people who can commiserate, write in our journal, or---and best of all---express them to Job's God who records our tears in a bottle. It is never a good idea to go on social media or pronounce words of darkness to the objects of our frustration holding a smartphone.
