My Teachers in School -- randomly

I had this teacher in college I cannot ever forget, not because he was particularly good but because he failed to understand what I wrote in an essay: I said something like "I can be alone but not lonely just as I can be lonely but not alone." He called me aside along with a few others because he felt he needed to teach us how to write better. My classmates were aghast because they thought I wrote well. I stood pat on what I wrote, saddened that a man of his years couldn't get the drift. His name: Joey Ocampo. How brazen of me to identify him but why not? I have nothing to lose. I felt so small after he called me among the few others, yes I felt diminished but that didn't change my mind. I continued to love writing. The sem after I had him, I was in a class for good writers. Did he recommend me or did my other English teacher? I never found out ...

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The teacher I had after JO was Ms. Murielle Muspratt. I think she was British. She had that cute accent. She had curly red hair, small eye glasses, spoke and dressed very properly. She brought us to a zoo to write haikus. I couldn't understand why a zoo where we saw snakes et al. Anyway..., she liked two of my essays enough to read them out in class. She subjected each one of us in class to a one-on-one session with her and her comment which I can distinctly remember was "You have an eye for detail." The topics of the essays I wrote which she liked were about the burgis mentality and childhood. I still recall portions of these essays. In the first, I mentioned how I was different from my classmates in elementary and high school in that I preferred to watch Tagalog movies over foreign ones, how I'd watch them almost every weekend with Mama, during the first screening at that. We were always the early birds in the movie house without airconditioning so that Mama would always turn on the fans herself. My second essay was entitled, "Childhood Memories, Childish Dreams." There I wrote of how I'd play "teacher-teacher" with the maids in the house as students or if they weren't cooperative, with my dolls as students. I enjoyed Ms. Muspratt's class immensely and looked forward to attending them.

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Another teacher I liked was Paul Kratoska, who taught us History of the Modern World. He was tall and balding with glasses like Ms. Muspratt's. Later I found out they became boyfriend-girlfriend. Whether it went beyond that, I don't know for sure. Mr. Kratoska gave me an A++ for my paper on the Industrial Revolution in England. I was so happy. Come final exams time, as he was distributing our exam papers, I remained hopeful he'd still announce exemptions but he didn't. How optimistic could I get? Several years back I saw an article he wrote in the Mabuhay magazine of Philippine Airlines.

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I had another foreigner teacher, Mr. Routledge. He was short and reminds me now, looking back, of Paul Williams. Straight blond hair, glasses. He singled me out after one long test because my score went beyond the highest possible but more than anything else about his class, what I remember most was having Boy Abunda as classmate. seriously. He was very vocal even then. He sat on the column nearest the door, second or third row I think. Somehow, one doesn't forget a Boy Abunda. The subject was Asian Civilization.

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In grade school, we had this Science teacher, Ms. Savaris. She was one of three who invaded the school from Iloilo. I can still almost hear her ask, "What is matter?" because she asked it almost everyday so that up till now, I remember what matter is "Anything that occupies space and has weight." OF late that definition has been modified to "anything that occupies space and has mass." The difference of course is that weight has to do with gravity which the moon doesn't have. Things have mass in the moon but not weight. Now where did I learn that? From tutoring. But I digress. Back to my teachers

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Another of the three teachers we had from Iloilo was Ms. Editha Hechanova. She was very fair and slim and she taught us English. I remember she was very sweet too. I don't remember much else about her though.

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The last with the most impact among the three was Ms. Nena Salazar. She taught us math and was our class adviser. I guess she was my first experience of having a "terror" of a teacher, but I liked her, immensely. She knew what she was teaching, having graduated from college at the top of her class I think. It's a pity the three taught in our school for just a year so we never saw them ever again. Yet who knows ...

More posts on the others when I get back...