The Ballad of Sunsets and Shooting Stars: February 2021

Thursday, February 25, 2021

It felt like spring time on this February morning...

Sunday, February 21, 2021

TEACHING AND LEARNING

Teaching is usually defined in the dictionary as a profession that engages with the learners to help them understand a certain subject, while the learner is someone who needs to be supervised by the teacher.

But if I will define teaching on my own opinion, I believe that teaching is the ability to impart wisdom and knowledge to others. And learning is the measurement of the teacher’s ability to do that.

Though learning does not always require teaching because we can learn on our own, especially through our experiences and self-reliance, it does not go the same way with teaching. Teaching is useless if no one is learning. Thus, learning is always required in teaching.

Effective teaching is the way to produce learning. In my own experience, I can say that to be an effective teacher, one must know how to level their way of communication to their learners/students. The teacher must not expect that all students can easily grasp what he/she is teaching. The teacher must know how the minds of the students work. How will he/she be able to let them understand in the easiest possible way the subject matter.

Effective teaching is being able to learn from the students as well on how to enhance your communicate with them. It is about being open for improvement of one’s skills in teaching. Open for new mechanics and techniques. Open for constructive criticisms. After all, the only way to teach is to learn first, so it is relevant that teachers are open minded.

Lastly, I wanted to share my own thoughts regarding teaching. I believe that the real measurement of one’s capability is not about how much you have learned but how much wisdom and knowledge you have imparted to others. For wisdom and knowledge are useless if not shared. It is like success without a successor.

Orange, Pink, and Purple Sky

REFLECTION PAPER

Parenting is one of the hardest tasks we could ever encounter in our lives. It is both a duty and responsibility. But at the end of the day, as the saying goes, it is worthwhile.

I, myself is a parent too. And what makes it more difficult in my situation is that I am a single mother, taking the responsibility of being the mother and the father to my daughter, working, and studying all at the same time.

One of the hardest things that I encountered in being a single parent is disciplining my child. If you ask me if I ever scold my child, the answer is yes, I do. But what I do after I scolded her (if she is already sober), is I talk to her alone. I explain to her why I got mad and why it is necessary for me to scold her. I also explain to her the importance of discipline. We do have a bonding time every night, we read a book, we talk about her day and I also share to her what happened to me at work. It is our favorite time of the day. So even though I am tired after work, we never miss this night talk before we sleep.

I believe that right and constant communication is one way to discipline a child. It is also a way of expressing your love as a parent. Communication is so vital in every relationship that mostly, it fails because of the lack of it.

If there is one advise that I could impart to other parents is that, since communication is very important in our relationship with our children, then we should always remember to have a constant communication with God. Teach your child the importance of faith. Because at the end of the day, our child will eventually outlive us. And it is important for them to have that faith to fall back on and to stand on when we are no longer there to guide them. It will be their solace. We must accept that eventually we will have to let go of them, and our responsibility is to raise them to become strong, brave, and responsible for their own. And we must also accept the fact that we are also just human beings, and we are not perfect parents, we have our lapses and shortcomings as well, (and I do not want to sound too religious), but I believe that only God could fill up those gaps that we cannot fill ourselves. And at the end of the day, what keeps us going is our faith, so why not impart that faith to our children as well so they can keep on carrying their lives as well even after we already passed.

In the end, all our sacrifices will be worth it. After all, the child is always the glory of the parent.