the visitation of the gods

part of my job includes visiting practicumers in their various schools and watching them execute their lesson plans. in the first semester, it's usually a cushy job: i rub elbows with little tisoy boys and girls in overly expensive pre-schools whose yearly tuition fees are enough to cover my five-odd years in law school, i sit in nice airconditioned classrooms, and meet with teachers whose faces grace society pages every so often. in the second semester, however, i am thrown to the public school system.

oddly enough, the public school is an interesting place to be in, moreso i'd say, than your run-of-the-mill preschool. i've found out that kids are kept at home by parents at the start of the year so that they're not made to clean classrooms. i've learned that teachers have identified the "rich" kids in class and milk them for all they're worth during programs. i've realized that the seat of honor turns out to be the teacher's table and that if you're there, you'd most likely have the only electric fan aimed at you.

i also found out that my favorite pancit bihon costs only ten bucks a plate if you buy it from the canteen. it's also not true that they don't sell junk food and softdrinks because they do. there really is a row four and a section one. there are teachers who have dedicated their entire lives to lording it over other poor hapless teachers and there are teachers whose idea of discipline is to throw a sandal across the room.

sometimes i wonder if i did the right thing in sending my eight practicumers to the public school system. three to five times a month i share their burden with them: i wake up at four to be in their classrooms by six to observe them, i sit with them in tables tucked in stairwell corners because there are no actual faculty rooms, i hold my breath when passing by bathrooms that have yet to see a janitor. sometimes, i count the remaining days left with them, crossing off one difficult day after another, knowing that one day, the experience will end.

for us it will, but for the kids who are stuck in that system, it may never will.

and that's the saddest thing of all.