Back to the Underground World of Education

Juicy Peppah

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MAYBE it will take ages before I land on a stable job. That’s the perk of taking a break for about a year after graduation: you’ll find difficulty searching for a living in the future.

When most of my batch mates were fussing over their resumes, cover letters and target schools, I was at home, sitting in front of the computer, playing Super Collapse if not writing [or net surfing]. And when they were taking suicide over their learning plans and extra-curricular assignments, I was in front of the TV laughing out loud at Beelzebub.

That could be the reason I act like a total idiot whenever I submit papers to authorized persons for my application. Because I didn’t know anybody, I couldn’t get someone to back me up [for that, I think I just have to rely on the contents of my profile or my Tupperware smiles].

While submitting papers for my job application, I happened to decide practicing tennis one day, since we have new yet unused tennis equipment at home. I realized being active in sports allows me to be a glutton without adding pounds on my waistline [my young brother who used to practice baseball inspired me, thankfully].

So after following my application up at the municipal hall, I gathered the tennis equipment and walked straight to the sports complex which was only a million paces away from home.

It was my first time to play tennis, yet not with an opponent. I practiced tennis on a wall, and because it was not as light as ping pong, I needed to adjust my strength. In the end, however, I would make only a few returns and a lot of ball-picking [because I am technically a physical weakling]. The first try ended shortly because I had no extra tennis balls in my bag. The first [and the last] one sadly ended up in a dirty pond, thanks to my inexperience.

TRUTHFULLY, I dislike children, especially those who refuse correction [like me]. But by the moment I returned to the sports complex—meeting a group of children whom I happened to talk with over walling— changed my mind.

While practicing tennis for the second time, a little boy in orange picked my ball when I failed to return it to the wall. For me, even though he did only a little thing, it already meant a lot. Which was why after a few more series of walling and over-the–wall encounters, I gave him [and his friends] a chance to play tennis using my own equipment.

Then I talked with the boys, asking each of them what their names were, in what grades were they in, why they were out of school that afternoon, and what their dreams were. There I stopped walling stupidly so that they could play [not to mention I wanted to observe them since they seem to know the proper stances and the foot works in tennis, hahaha].

I listened to their ghost stories, ball-picking experiences, [and sometimes the expletives they sweetly utter to one another]. I laughed with them, answered some of their questions. We even talked about the old and new means of death [for one of them told me that before, people die of cigarettes and liquors but today, people die of technological gadget abuse], creation and destruction of earth [it’s amusing children at that age could be that knowledgeable nowadays], and at times, religion.

One of those little boys even told me that at that age, he already knew how to smoke and drink liquor, to which I did not react violently anymore as a promising teacher. I mean, what’s the point? Even I did the same.

The encounter with them made me realize two things about being a teacher: [1] that when we teach, we do not need to speak or express ourselves all the time. We just have to give the floor to our students, give them a chance to speak, to do something; and [2] that as time passes, learners changes as their needs do, and we as teachers must not force them to grope the paths we trod, yet allow them to draw their own [paths] and believe that though the ways they chose are different from ours, in time they will achieve the end we teachers had always hoped for them.