The Lesson Plan

(NOTE: This post is now part of the Confessions of a Teacher series)

This is the full text of the speech I delivered in the Bloggers’ Kapihan 2. My actual speech was a spontaneous riff off the following text and this post will detail any and all points I missed.

Overall, I think we’ve had a good exchange. There was Danny Arao who gave a very good overview of the changing the new media education landscape and Tonchi Tinio of ACTS who spoke at length about the Cyber Education Project. You may read my piece, Why I am NOT excited about the Cyber Education Project, for my two cents on the issue.

PNU education student Lalon dela Rosa then commented on our speeches. I also really appreciated the questions fielded by Ederic, Mi and Benj as they allowed me to touch on a lot more points. I apologize if I had to leave early since I had another meeting to run to at 6PM. I only wish we had more teachers in the audience as my presentation was geared mostly towards them — only in the last minute did I gear it more towards bloggers. Perhaps we can talk to more educators in a future BK? I’ll look forward to one.

What follows is the full text of the speech I delivered this afternoon. This is the first time I talk about my history as a blogger and how I made the transition to a teacher-blogger, and why I continue to do so until today despite all its apparent challenges.

Googling Sir Martin

Historically, I was a blogger before a teacher. I began a personal Livejournal blog in February 2004 mainly to keep in touch with my friends. I entered the Philippine Science High School in November though I didn’t utilize blogging as a teaching tool then. At that time, I was content with a Yahoo! Group and merely saw the Internet as a faster and more convenient way to disseminate information and materials. Though I didn’t openly disseminate my blog to my students, I welcomed all those who found it. Still, it remained a personal blog. At that time, I found it “cute” that I was being read and my students would comment on the songs I listen to, the movies I watch and the books I read and so on. It was only when my time in Pisay was about to end when I realized the potential reach of blogging.

I was only a substitute teacher when I was hired. I began in November ‘04 and that is clearly way past the middle of the school year. They took me in with only the promise that when the teacher I substituted for returned, I would leave. And the teacher returned.

I wrote about that in my blog. I wrote a farewell and thank you post and wrote an even longer emo post about not knowing where to go with my life (I was only 22). And then my students read that. Then they began to comment, telling me that I should stay and that the school would be stupid to let me go and so on. I simply replied that all these are beyond me now. Yet, the comments continued to come. While there were still about six comments, an old friend from college said that if the post reaches 10, I would stay. Of course, he didn’t mean that. But through some twist of fate, another teacher from the social science unit resigned at the end of the year and eventually, I ended up taking the slot. I ended up staying. My friend was right, but it didn’t reach 10 comments. It reached 30.

The next school year, I began writing more seriously. During the summer of ‘05, I was able to go on a trip to China and that really intensified my love and interest in Asian history and culture, which I would write about a lot. It was also during that school year when I began writing for the school paper, and so I would write a lot of op-ed pieces both for the paper and my blog. We can say that at that point, my blog was becoming self-aware. It knows its being read and thus would only welcome content that would be relevant to its audience — my students. However, it still felt personal for me. It was where my students were welcome to know more about me, but not necessarily the other way around. For all intents and purposes, when it came to interaction online, a Yahoo! Group still sufficed.

This went on for a little while longer. My focus was still on getting as good as I can in my classroom instruction and I only saw blogging as mostly a personal thing. And while this happened, the world around us was changing. Newer and faster technologies began emerging in the Internet. Students began flaunting blogs hosted in Blogspot, Xanga, and Tabulas. Social networking sites connected students far better and faster than e-groups. YouTube was born. People started talking about PageRank and AdSense. As all these happened, I began to see my blog shrink. I wanted my blog small, quiet and personal but little by little I could no longer see what I could do with it in its smallness. I felt that there were too many possibilities out there and I wasn’t making the most out of them.

And it showed in my students’ work. More and more, we teachers were receiving research papers lifted off Wikipedia. Discipline cases began to escalate of dormers sneaking out at night to play DOTA. Students were becoming more impatient in their classes — they feel that they could learn more, faster and better on their own. And all these of course, affected their performance. Cramming is the favorite past time of Pisay students (as with most students) but I’ve seen how bad it can get. At one time, a group of students submitted photocopied pages of a book as their research paper. It was at that point when I noticed the disruptions caused by these new media. And then I realized that perhaps, our students can no longer be confined in the four walls of the classroom.

Of course, this thinking isn’t new. But what makes this age different is the fact that our students learn differently. For one, they know that they don’t have to rely on everything the teacher says. With the Internet readily available to them, what really differentiates a teacher’s word from a websites’? This question becomes even more important when they see that their teachers derive their lessons and visual aids from the Internet too. Thus, in a huge way, the Internet has eroded the traditional patterns of authority. This notion too isn’t new. Instead of power being distributed top-bottom, these days it is more of side to side. When you’re on the Internet, it doesn’t really matter who you are unless you’re the one being talked about. But as long as you’re the one doing the talking — no matter what issue — it doesn’t matter what your race, age, gender, religion is anymore. Just bring it.

And this thinking finds its way into the classroom. It is a truism that a teacher learns from his or her students too. But these days, a lot of teachers end up learning more about how little they actually know — and they learn this from their students. This shows in the questions students ask, the topics they request and the expectations they set. One of the most memorable lines from The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman goes, “search is the anti-thesis of being taught.” With information at our fingertips, why waste time going to class and raising our hand? I remember one student — she was planning to take up InterMed in college — who was so interested in medicines and herbal remedies. At one time she asked me, “Sir, in which quarter do we take up Chinese medicine?” And once, a student thinking of going to PMA requested that we discuss World War I and II for half a school year. In either case or any other similar case, I politely explain the boundaries of the course and make a soft commitment to touching on their topics briefly. Because of the Internet, a syllabus for a history class is exactly that — history. Where does that leave the teacher now? In my mind I ask, “Do I look like I have the word Google on my chest?” Maybe not, but for our students we may as well have. They Google Naruto, Angel Locsin and Charles Darwin all the time. But when they Google “Sir Martin” what will come out?

This is where the blog comes in.

My current blog was born just this year — January 6, 2007 to be precise. I created it with the vision of it becoming my work blog, a place where I can focus on presenting material that would add value to what I teach. I wanted to go beyond information dissemination and to really engage my students online. I would use the blog to tease upcoming activities and give them a look into the origins of the different things we do in class. I would write about issues which interest me, which I feel will interest them, and thus will be interesting to add to our course. I would write about my students, my work and my love for teaching. But as I did all these, little did I know that I would realize something even far more powerful. A while ago I mentioned that the Internet has the potential to displace the teacher. I realized that through blogging, we teachers can win back our place in the classroom.

But before that, let me make one thing very clear right now. For those who are interested in integrating a blog with their teaching, mark my words: it will take up a lot of your time. Take me for instance. My official time in Pisay is from 11:30am to 4:30pm. I begin my day at 6AM, check e-mail and news until I have breakfast at 7. After which I take things slow and prepare for work until 10AM when I leave for school. Once I arrive, I focus on my classes and my club until I get to leave at around 4:30 to 5. Then I work my way home from QC to Parañaque and arrive home at 6PM. I rest until I have dinner at 7 and then begin updating my blog until about 9 or 10. This is the ideal time for an update since most of my students are online as well, and thus I can’t afford to miss this small window especially if we have a lot of important things coming up. At around 10:30 I call it a night and as I read a book to sleep I look at my desk and see that I still have papers to check, exams to make and lessons to prepare. They say that teachers are overworked and underpaid? Really.

Blogging won’t make your teaching load lighter. It will add to it — at least in the beginning. Also, it is a thankless job. You won’t get paid for it, you won’t get promoted because of it. Towards the end of last school year, I had to accomplish a form that detailed all my accomplishments for the past ten months. Underneath publications, I wrote down my blog “Inevitable Karma” (this blog’s name back then) and noted that it was a form of self-publishing. The form was returned to me because — according to the people in charge — there was no such thing as self-publishing. Really.

Yet despite all these, I blog on. Perhaps, what sustains me is that even before I began blogging, I already love writing, teaching and being online, thus blogging was a logical step for me. Still, it takes a lot of commitment especially when it begins to work. Sure, there are some blogs which don’t take much effort — a PowerPoint here, a link there, a course description here, a table of deadlines there. But a blog is not a bulletin. It is an unending conversation and this is why it takes some commitment. Through my blog, I get to talk with my students, parents, fellow teachers, and even random people from Minneapolis to Mongolia.

Therefore, blogging is a decision you have to make as a teacher. It has to be a conscious choice. When you introduce yourself in the beginning of the school year, you will have to state your blog beneath your name. You will have to be honest with yourself. Do you have the time? Can you be consistent? Are you willing to learn and take risks? All successful blogs — no matter what field or purpose — survive because there are passionate bloggers behind them. A teacher blogger is no less.

And once you have made the decision to blog, what you will have to figure out next is exactly what it is you wish to blog. A teacher-blog can be a simple resource for PowerPoints, readings, assignments, course outlines, links, videos, etc. With the convergence of technology as it is, I can only fall into cliches — there is no limit to what you can do. However, for the teacher, there is something else you can do. There is something more.

Allow me to be technical for a while. Early on I mentioned that the traditional form of authority — top-down — has been eroded by the openness and accessibility of technology and information. These days, it’s more of side by side. The perfect example of this would be E-Bay where everyone is a buyer and a seller. For every good transaction you make, you can earn a good review from the person you transacted with. And with enough good reviews, you earn a colored star starting from yellow, blue, turquoise and so on. Your good behavior is rewarded with a badge which everyone can see, and the higher your badge goes, the more comfortable people will be towards trading with you. This is what we mean by a side by side power structure. Power in this case does not come in the form of authority but of credibility.

We see this credibility everywhere — in blogs, in social news websites, in Wikipedia, and so on. The more credible you become, the more reliable you become, and the more effective blogger, reporter, writer you become. What I have discovered is that the same principle applies to us teachers. In an era where we compete with many sources of information and entertainment for our students’ respect and attention, a teacher only stands a chance of becoming more effective not by becoming even more authoritarian but by becoming more credible. However, how does one do that?

I believe we teachers will have our different paths, but let me share mine. Building up credibility requires a lot of honesty, consistency and open-mindedness, and I believe that blogging helps a lot in this. Let me tell you a story.

About three weeks after my blog was born, a student started up a conversation with me during one long and overdrawn symposium in school. She asked, “Sir Martin, how come you don’t share much about your personal life?”

I answered, “Well, I never thought that we teachers were supposed to.”

“Well sir,” she said. “It’s you.”

Her reply got stuck in my head for the rest of the day. I know that I shouldn’t make much of it since students are naturally curious about the personal lives of their teachers. However, when I got home, I just felt the inspiration to write. I don’t know what compelled me but I sat down and began typing. Her words, “It’s you” circled my head and I felt that I begin with a line that would strike them in all its honesty.

I typed, “I was never a trained teacher.”

That was the first line of a series of entries entitled “Confessions of a Teacher” and as the post went on, I talked about how I graduated political science and was supposed to become a lawyer but decided not to, how I had several jobs after college and even worked three months in a call center, and how a phone call in one October night led me to Pisay.

My students loved the revelation. Now, I recall what Manolo Quezon said in the last BK — that a blogger is either an exhibitionist or a voyeur. And let me tell you now, a teacher-blogger must have to be an exhibitionist! We all have to “show off” because that is what an effective teacher does. I remember the wise words a fellow teacher told me when I was beginning, “the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the great teacher demonstrates, the superior teacher inspires.” And at that time, all I wanted was to become the best teacher I could be.

Eventually, my students started asking me why I took up Political Science in the first place if in my heart of hearts I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I devoted another confession to that, telling them about how plans change and how destinies reveal themselves. I showed them that all those cliches are true — that things always become better, that we hardly get what we want because often we don’t know what it is we want, and that we are never, ever alone. It is one thing to tell our students all these, but it is a whole other thing to make them believe that all these are true.

Blogging has allowed me to connect with my students this deeply. After all, one of the pillars of blogging is honesty. It does take a lot of courage, and I realize that sharing such information on the Internet is a huge risk on my part. However, I also realize that the students I handle — these teenagers who are at the same moment hungry for life and sick of life — appreciate knowing that other people have been hurt, rejected and tested and yet have turned out fine. For them to realize that their teacher had been one of them and that this teacher now chooses to work among all of them, is what it means to be credible in their eyes.

And once you are seen as credible, they will trust you. They will listen to you. They will respect you. They will take risks with you and they will learn with you. Everything else follows from there — what we teach, how we teach, and even why we teach. For instance, my students realize that political science is my degree, history is my hobby, and teaching is my passion. When I began teaching history, it was all very textbook to me. But as I learned more, I my interest in it grew and it is that enthusiasm which I show in my blog and share with my students. My interests drive me and I’d like the same to be true for them. Often, I’d make a deal with them: I teach you something you don’t know, you teach me something I don’t know. A student teacher relationship is still a relationship. It comes with expectations and compromise.

In the same way they learned about me, I also learned about them. Just before the current school year began, I browsed through the different blogs of my upcoming students. I figured out what their interests, expectations, hopes, and fears were. In Pisay, 2nd year is seen as the most difficult school year and I read that clearly in their blogs even before the year began. I was able to play on these and create something truly different for them. So on the very first day, I told them that “yes, this will be the most challenging year in Pisay but this is also the year that you will make history. It will be a tough year but I promise you, you will accomplish something.” And they know that when I say that, I mean it.

My point is simple. To be a truly effective teacher, your students will have to trust you. They will have to see you as credible. We have to generate value. Our students must be able to sit down in the classroom and say, I am learning something from teacher where I cannot get elsewhere. And where does a blog come in? It is not a merely an extension of the classroom. It is an extension of the teacher.

In the end, a teacher’s work is never done. I remember a saying that goes: “A teacher touches eternity. You can never tell where his influence ends.” Of course this refers to our potential to make a difference in our students’ lives. But when you start blogging, when you get online, you’ll get to know what eternity means in a whole new way. It is because of this that I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to you today.

Thank you very much!