Under the stairs

I am blogging from under the stairs. 'Tis the little space I was given for my #readinghubproject. It looks like a storage room and one tweep even mistook it for a damaged area when I posted a pic earlier. I don't mind. It allows me space for my abubots. It has a table big enough for my things and I actually have my laptop on it now which I couldn't do in the 1 foot by 2 feet excuse for a table I have in the lugawan style faculty room on the other side of the building.

How has it been since I decided to quit a higher paying tenured post somewhere near Morayta? Let me count the blessings:
1. Shorter work hours. Public school teachers report for six hours only each day. My schedule though this semester donates additional 30 minutes to the school (9-3:30), Mondays thru Wednesdays and more on Fridays (9-4:30). I don't mind because of...
2. Shorter travel time to and from school. Recto from our place ate up to three hours daily from my life. That was shadow work (as I learned years ago from an article by Prof. Randy David). It wasn't paid. Now I get to school/home within 15 minutes save for that afternoon when this group said to be devotees of the Black Nazarene (CAMANAVA sect) extended travel to an hour because of,  yeah, sure, their faith.
3. More time for home and family.
4. More time to do schoolwork.
5. Feels good to be teaching the ones who need it most

How about the non-blessings?
1. The system stinks. I have decided to just stop getting mad last week when the Boss was not as friendly and helpful as before. I suppose she already is up to her neck in feedback about her SHS faculty (we are very outspoken and not zombie-like in complying).
2. The place is so noisy. I actually am planning to have my ears checked because I really don't know if it's the noise or the students just don't speak loud enough when reciting or I am really getting hard of hearing.
3. If not for the afternoon rains, the place is just too hot and uncomfortable. The ceiling fans in the rooms conked out even before the previous school year ended. Now, they are being repaired with students paying for the repairs. Teachers bring their own little fans on top of the LCD projector and laptops they need to bring to class.
4. No library suited to the grade level (SHS). Hopefully, when we get the newer and bigger building (unless the junior high school people sequester it again) , we can have both library and faculty room.
5. The usual inefficient, redundant documentary requirements from the division office. Just today, all our annual physical exam records were returned to us because they were not accomplished on special paper. The clinic personnel thought that we can just have the forms photocopied but the division people want the special hard paper which they fail to supply us because teachers don't get supplies. We buy our own and just hope the subsidies (chalk allowance, instructional materials allowance, etc) would come soon.

Why am I blogging about this? Wala lang. I have three hours vacant and I finished my PowerPoints early. There's the idea and the urge to write. The latter does not come often enough. I would love to post regularly but the writing urge does not come that easily for me.

Yup, that's it. I will have two Literature classes come 1:30 pm. Will discuss Jeff Canoy's Dispatches from Marawi.

One thing I like about starting over in a new school and diff system, I get to think of new strats-- not yet late for me given my years in teaching.

Chairs

Funny how I have this history with chairs, tables, posts and bosses. I get to recall it oh so suddenly after I told my daughter how luxurious looking were the conference table and swivel chairs in my current boss' office. I am happily (acceptingly) holding office under the stairs with an old teacher's table which has missed its side drawer but repainted yellow by a younger colleague who thought I would have some use for it in my reading hub project. It was a better table than the one I have in our current faculty room. I couldn't even put my laptop in that 1'x2' space alloted to me but that one, too was better than the "whatever" space I could get on a table I shared with my colleagues for several months last year inside that space grudgingly given to us by the science department in the building supposedly for OUR department. Confused already? 

 

Anyway, my current "lungga" under the stairs also has two extra armchairs on which I can put my things but I sit on a monobloc stool which happened to make itself available for me during Brigada Eskwela. I am quite content with my space now bec I get to work on a bigger table in between classes and the books and cabinet donated to my reading hub project are right next to me. The admin was able to fulfill my lone request of a grill gate which I can padlock at the end of the day. Currently, a cat and her kittens have discovered my cave and have helped themselves to my boxes. 

In my previous schools, chairs, desks and bosses also figured prominently. At the Morayta tech college, I had my own table, an ergonomic chair which was scheduled to be replaced when I resigned, and a laptop. I shared the domain with three other faculty members who helped me run the language center. I miss the place , its furniture and equipment and the services it offered to students. My bosses' offices of course were royalty compared to the one we had. I guess, this is true in many companies, the big bosses have it all really good when it comes to amenities. Still, I remain mighty proud of that office which I left behind to go teach in a public school nearby.

My cubicle at the Taft university was also something many public school teachers will not experience. All probationary and tenured faculty had individual cubicles huge enough for all the paperwork our job entailed. We had a well-appointed faculty room on the 15th floor. I would have stayed there til retirement but I had problems with my Chair. Yes, the boss, not the furniture.

Speaking of Chairs, I was Chair for Mass Com in a university chain years ago. Funny though that in my first month, our office was too crowded with Chairs and staff that I didn't have a chair! That university chain had all the illusion of being an academic leader in something but it was really just a business that thought so little of students and teachers. 

I am feeling a bit sad that my current boss (with whom I get along well, actually) has a very beautiful office. I don't know if she doesn't feel out of place because the rest of the school needs refurbishing. I don't know why bosses can actually enjoy amenities when their constituents are in need of even the most basic - chairs, tables, fans, toilets. I hope my boss will go visit the rest of the school more often lest she be thought of less than she deserves by the community . Under Duterte, I fear that we're back to the old rotten ways at the education department. I was inspired by Bro. Armin to transfer to the public school. I don't know but Sec Briones , despite possibly similarly intentioned as her predecessor, is too old and weak to oversee the department which in its history was once the most corrupt government agency. Huge, complicated... too great a responsibility. Ideals are lost like chairs, missed like the drawer on my yellow table.