two weeks have passed and i’m still alive (!) thanks to these guys :) best co-teachers slash support group ever ♥

i realized today, na masyado ata inaangkin ng mga taga-UP ang term na “iskolar ng bayan.” 

my students in 3-acacia now call themselves mga iskolar ng bayan, because that is what they are. and they call themselves mga iskolar para sa bayan, because that is what i am going to teach them to be. 

and i don’t care if i sound like a broken record but i will never tire of telling them - i believe in you so much more than i ever believed in myself. i used to think i was going to change the world. now i really, truly, honestly believe that that’s exactly what my kids are one day going to do. and i am going to help them get there.

Nigel Lythgoe said this on an episode of So You Think You Can Dance, about dancing, and I’ve never forgotten it. Now I’m replacing “dancing” with “teaching” because it applies:

You must be so tired, but that’s what teaching’s about. transcending the physicality of it and teaching from a totally different place entirely.

Transcending the physicality of it, and teaching from a totally different place entirely. Buhos.

do you remember that day we spent hibernating on my bed? we kept saying “two minutes. i am going to get up in two minutes,” but somehow we let the sunrise, the sunset and an entire afternoon pass us by. do you remember that day?

because i do.

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place, filled with beautiful people.

My personal mantra used to be “live free or die soft.” In fact, the first time I seriously considered getting a tattoo, I wanted those words engraved on my flesh. I used to think that fighting for the things I believed in meant having to go against the grain, to just do and be me and forget all else. I used to think I had an obligation to live life the way I believed it, and to not let anyone else dictate it for me. 

Today I am not ashamed to say that I am soft. And that I am free, too. That I am soft and graceful: like water flowing free downstream, or that I am swift and strong like rapids fighting earth and stone and the currents. I am not ashamed to admit fault in the way I used to live, in the way I used to see myself. I am not ashamed to claim that I am water and that this is water and that I am only discovering these things now. That it is okay to pause for a second and let life happen to me, instead of dictating how life should be. That I am seeing the world for the first time, like a wide-eyed child - small hands, big eyes and bigger dreams - and that it is more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen, even during moments when it is haunting and terrifying and painful. It is so beautiful both in what it is and in what it could be, so beautiful that I am terrified to try and put it down in words.

I know this is all very abstract and strange but I don’t know yet how to express what exactly it is that I am experiencing. Maybe it is enough to say that I have never seen and felt more love (coming from all places, including within myself) than in the past week, and that, more than anything else, gives me hope. That this - this is water, and it is so so beautiful.

the other day, i met (and fell in love with) my new family: 250 of the biggest, brightest eyes you have ever seen. today, i say goodbye (again) to the family i have here at home - my mom, my dad, my sister. at this very moment, my heart cannot tell up from down, right from left.

is it any wonder, then, that it is 2 am and i am wide awake?

“Okay, so the children can’t yet sit still for more than five seconds, but nobody changed the world by just sitting still.” (Rabuy, 2013). 

But maybe by necessity, having passion and purpose come with a life that is committed to running towards, rather than away from, fires. - Clarissa Delgado

meet the sto. cristo grade 3 faculty HEHEHE