Write from the heart

MANILA, Philippines - My 14 years in teaching has taught me that awards and accolades accorded to a teacher are just secondary to the crucial role of helping shape the students’ future. A teacher’s success may be reflected through scores, grades and merits on a report card. But more important than those figures is how she initiates turning points that changed the students’ lives.

Erin Gruwell’s Teach with Your Heart sends a resounding message on how a teacher can be instrumental to the transformation of students who were considered “at risk,” and dubbed as “rejects” in the community. Her students form part of the statistics of dropouts and perpetrators of violence in school. Erin Gruwell tells her amazing odyssey with the Freedom Writers, a band of “at risk” students whose writing skills she nurtured during her first year at Woodrow Wilson High School.

I remember my first few years of being a young teacher. I began with a kind of passion fueled with idealism and the dream to change the world. My mind was verdant with ideas culled from books. Like Erin, I envisioned my first day in school to be a productive exchange of knowledge and ideas with the learners. I thought that making a difference begins in planning a grammar lesson or reciting a meaningful poem in class. I was wrong. I learned that before writing my lesson plan, there are many unwritten prerequisites in the teaching-learning process to consider, though they are left for me to discover.

Like Erin, I met challenges on Day One. Some of my students were either bullies or were being bullied by their classmates. Some come from broken families; many of them were poor and could hardly sit still in class because they were hungry. I had students who were single parents at a young age.

Nothing prepared me for students whose lives were shattered due to violence, poverty and conflicts. I was not prepared to help them deal with their personal pain. Their bottled-up emotions often translated to failing grades, truancy and misbehavior. School for them was just a temporary release from the harsh realities they had to endure at home.

Like Erin’s students, my students accepted they were poor. They were also used to inheriting old and worn-out books, barren classrooms, beat-up chair, and dirty walls.

Today, remembering those students would jerk a tear or two. Those difficult moments made me understand how it is to be a teacher, a time when I felt that the students really needed me.

I applaud Erin for her sacrifices, especially when she had to draw money from her own pocket to buy copies of The Catcher in the Rye and other books found on her reading list. She also helped fund their field trips to museums and historic places like Auschwitz, where they met Holocaust survivors, and visited the attic where Anne Frank hid with her family.

Reading her memoir was like reminiscing those days when I had to save a portion of my salary for projects in the classroom. My students and I would spend our Saturdays in school. I encouraged them to be creative by using indigenous materials to save money. Their merienda (biscuits and juice) and cleaning materials were courtesy of my salary as a neophyte teacher at that time.

There, my students would proudly mount their poems, essays and artworks, then carefully cover their improvised bulletin boards with plastic. They were happy with the recognition and admiration they got from their schoolmates who passed by their room. My students at that time may be far from being the school’s academic top performers, but I was satisfied to hear them call something as their own creation.

In Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity, they said that what we “see” is a product of what we believe is “out there.” We see things not as “they” are, but as we are.

Erin was able to change her students’ perception of the world through reading and writing. Her book selection, which includes The Diary of Anne Frank, showed them that there are young people out there who also went through pain, suffering and loss, but chose to hang on so the future, to that someday, and the world will learn from their stories. This inspired the Freedom Writers to rise above the wounds of their past, embrace the present, and welcome the future. Moreover, Erin’s brilliant networking strategies opened the doors for her students to meet Holocaust survivor  Miep Gies and film genius Steven Spielberg.

 Amazingly, Erin paved the way for her students to find their voice through writing. The Freedom Writers Diary was her students’ way to communicate with the world, and eventually for the world to understand them. Their diary gave people a new perspective of certain realities about teenage life particularly those young people exposed to crimes, drugs and violence. Writing enabled them to triumph over guilt, shame, anger and fear. Journal writing became an instrument toward catharsis –– for them to heal their emotions, reflect on their lives, and envision a future they truly deserve.

Writing also means freedom for me. I was once a shy girl who doubted her abilities. That was until I crossed paths with Ma’am Madelyn Menor. We fondly called her Ma’am Madz in school. She was our writing mentor. Her candid opinions and comments about our work in class caught my interest and earned my respect. “Writers are both born and made,” she said in one of her lectures. She echoed some writing principles I learned from Mr. Salvador Battung, my all-time favorite literature teacher back in high school.

So I never cared if I was born with a writing talent or if I am a product of great teachers like her. Writing to me is essential, and I must endeavor to learn the craft. Ma’am Madz is an extraordinary English teacher. Like Erin Gruwell’s students, my classmates and I would hang out at her apartment. We listened to her stories about life. I remember that my best writing ideas germinated in our after-class conversations. Ma’am Madz has the knack for motivating students to write unforgettable essays, stories and poems that find their way to the pages of our school paper.

When I was on the brink of quitting teaching forever, Ma’am Madz came to my rescue. She said, “Aileen, a rolling stone never grows moss.” That jolted me back to my senses by reminding me why I decided to become a teacher in the first place.

  That was many years ago. Still, I think of Ma’am Madz whenever I write. I try to be like her whenever I teach my students writing and literature. I try to replicate my learning experiences with her. I don’t know if I’ve ever came close. But I keep on trying.

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

Aileen Concepcion-Ibañez is a high school English teacher at Cagayan National High School Tuguegarao City, Cagayan. “Teaching can also be a learning experience for the teacher; he can discover new ways to connect and communicate with students to make learning in the classroom lively and interesting.”