Why Teaching is not a Single Colored Road

By Charles Florence Cuyana

Some say that in teaching, teachers follow the same routine every day. They will enter the classroom, check the attendance, remind the class of announcements, start discussion, give a short activity, assign an assignment, and that is it. A monochromatic routine, we could say. However, behind these “repetitive” activities are the varying personalities and qualities of those involved in a learning session, of both the teacher and the students. Every day, teachers encounter students from different backgrounds who grew up to become unique individuals, complete with their own set of abilities, skills, and perspectives. Teachers consider and deal with these every time they step into the classroom, and one pre-service teacher is no stranger from this experience.

Ms. Julia Juco is a fourth year Bachelor of Secodary Education, major in Science pre-service teacher from the University of Santo Tomas - College of Education. When she entered the Education High School (EHS) Teaching Internship course of the program, she experienced teaching in both online and onsite modalities. Challenges soon emerged, especially on building rapport with her students. The online and hybrid set-ups proved to be difficult, as she had to teach while considering the needs of her students, managing her own feelings and emotions during a session, and being flexible in using various teaching and learning strategies. However, despite these challenges, she managed to push through and successfully finish her internship in EHS.

In her off-campus teaching internship, she described it in one word: culture shock. When she was deployed to a public high school, she encountered students with personalities and backgrounds that are strikingly different than from those she encountered in EHS. She got a first hand experience of