Week 1

the first (complete) week of UPIS classes just passed by. no, wait... it ZIPPED by! i can't recall ever going through a week so quickly. hmm, i suppose that's a good thing... or not really. i'm not really sure, hehe.

i have to admit, though, that the start of this schoolyear still finds me quite disoriented. it isn't so much the lesson planning (haha, yeah right!) or the checking of papers that gets to me. rather, it is that feeling of unfamiliarity with everything around me - even though i've been in the same building for the past 8 years (longer - if i count my high school days there). no, the physical environment is quite the same (though there have been lots of renovation done)... but i find myself looking for familiar faces that all of a sudden are no longer there.

take, for example, the first day of classes this schoolyear - 02 june. i was about to park in my usual parking space (near the older building) when the guard stopped me. he was new.. so i guess he didn't know i was a teacher. then, i was quite shaken when, during the flag ceremony, i looked around at the students and saw a sea of faces i totally did not recognize. the recording of the national anthem blared over the speakers. it wasn't the one we used before. hmm. i went up to my table at the faculty room. i instinctively turned to chat with my "table-mate," ma'am cyrene (whose last name is no longer caspe, i may add)... until i remembered that she's now assigned to the elementary. great. i went to my first class. it was the same room i've used the past 4 years (that darned room133 with the punched wall and overly-bright windows).. but i did not know my students.. most of them i have never taught before. by lunchtime i took my usual walk around the school grounds, half-expecting to run into my usual companions... until it dawned on me that they've all graduated. haha. everything was exactly as it was. but everything was different, too. it was extremely disorienting. unnerving.

i guess i ought to be used to this by now. one of the drawbacks of being a teacher is that time seems to behave quite differently for us - or for me, at least. you get the perception that everything is the same (actually, that's partly true - coz you teach at the same school for years and years). but all around you, the world moves with blinding speed... and nothing really stays the same. every year, you encounter a new set of faces. you teach.. you learn.. you connect with people.. you let go of friends. there's a sense of dying and rebirth. of pain and of joy.

ok, ok.. so i guess it isn't such a drawback, after all :)