For Now

It’s been ….three, four years since I came back to Butuan from Manila and it has been a really something. I’ve become a bum, a volunteer and a SpEd teacher.

My first six, eight months I was a bum. Well not a bum bum but rather just a bum. I do still have responsibilities at home like washing dishes, folding and sorting clothes, sweeping and polishing the floor and cooking food. Still, I was a bum. Dependent on my parents to give me money for snacks, or if I wanna go out and watch a movie or something. It was really boring. At first, like the first 3-4 weeks, it was fun and relaxing. I mean, you know I don’t have to think about anything but my day to day chores. No pressure, no responsibilities and I don’t have to worry if I have enough money to buy food or fare. But then, I got bored. I felt so cooped inside the house. There were times that I felt suffocated, sometimes feeling like I’d go nuts from doing nothing but sleep and eat. I felt like I’ve read almost all books and magazines inside the house due to boredom. I felt like I’ve memorized all the Harry Potter books we had at that time (which was like books 1-5). And it also felt like my brain’s turning to mush from lack of interaction. So I decided to look for a job or something to do.

So, then I became a volunteer. I applied for a job but the center that I was recommended to didn’t have an opening for a PT at that time so they said I could be a volunteer and I accepted. Well it was helpful. I mean becoming a volunteer helped me coz I could go out of the house at least 3 times a week. I also had money granted the money was still from my parents but at least it was spent on other things not just food. I was not gonna go bananas since I was no longer cooped inside the house. My social skills were being tuned again as I could get to interact with people not my family. I could see and experience things and the happenings beyond my subdivision. I was also able to help and learn in the process. I learned to be patient, more observant and less “demanding”. I also met and interacted with people who had a part in my life. I even became a “volunteer” at the City Social Welfare and Development office with a promise of a job, (how naive of me!) I was able to go to places in Butuan that if it was up to me I wouldn’t be able to go to. I was able to interact with people of different walks of life and different priorities. I was also able to experience what’s it like working for the city government (there was a lot of time wasted, a lot of red tape, catering to politicians and the usual fal de lals of a government agency). Being a volunteer also sort of eased me back into the hustle and bustle of being part of the workforce.

Then I became a SpEd teacher…..the position was offered to me at my lowest and I guess the most vulnerable part of my professional career. I must say, I accepted the offer readily and eagerly. I want to work already! Although I have worked with special children before and I have volunteered in the center for a good, well, more or less six months, it still didn’t prepare me for what a SpEd teacher has to be. When I started, most of the kids enrolled were children with autism. They are kids that usually have impaired social and communication skills ( if you’re really curios about autism you can check my blog on that topic). Anyway, so I’m in a whole new program and the person that was supposed to orient me on the whole SpEd thing was somebody that was also sent as a temporary replacement. Plus she was kinda implementing, errrr... introducing new policies and other stuff. It was kinda fortunate that the kids just got off from summer and some of them were also newcomers to the SpEd program as well. So on my first day, well….let’s just say that after two months I felt like I jumped at the deep end of the ocean. It was both overwhelming and exciting. It was both fun and tiring. I mean when I was a bum I wanted to have mental exercise, well I got it all. As a SpEd teacher I got physical exercises from chasing after hyperactive kids and making them sit on their chair to finish at least one activity. I also got my physical exercise from assisting them in their activities. I got mental exercises from being creative, like thinking of ways and means to make an ordinary lesson interesting to a special child. Be creative like, you know making an ordinary letter identification exciting and not monotonous. And of course we had to incorporate letter writing, coloring, object identification and other artsy stuff. My friends have known me as a very unartistic person so it was quite a challenge for me to be creative and artistic for my lessons. And the paper work to be done was ummm…daunting… I mean a report every weekend on a communication notebook and a formatted paper per child. And I, well, we had to write there on the paper all the activities we did everyday (which by the way had to be like 5-6 activities in a day!policy!) and the child’s responses to the activities and some other stuff. And we had to like personally make the activities everyday! Aaaarrrggghhh!It was really intimidating. So I get rather emotional. I mean as a PT I was more used to the bullet style of writing and here, it was all in paragraph and descriptive form. Plus one tends to get attached to the kids, so if they sort of backslides, I get frustrated especially if it’s a kid assigned to me. I also get really happy when a kid could write his name already and independently. It makes me so proud when a kid could greet me “Good afternoon Teacher Ann” or “I love you Teacher Ann” spontaneously without prompts or cues. It makes everything, all the hard work and tears all worth it just to see a kid achieve something that we regular people all take for granted. It’s really amazing.

But my journey is still not finished. I still have a lot to learn and a lot of things to experience. I hope it’ll be as fun and as exciting as I had gone through the past years.