The Rock...

Today, I guess, is my lucky day. This is the moment I have been waiting for. I should grab this special time to give myself freedom. This is my sole chance to tell my story.

It was the dawn of a peaceful day when a mother gave birth to a baby boy. Doctors, nurses and other staff members of the hospital were very busy and in a hurry to clean the baby and the mother and finish everything because there are a lot of mothers in pain lined up into the delivery room. The father, nervously and patiently waiting outside the delivery room, finally received the good news. As he was asked by the nurse for the name of the baby, the father immediately responded and said “Pedro.” The nurse wrote the name on the registration form, not knowing that the father mistakenly heard her question as “What is your name?”

However, the entire process of registration went on and the name of the baby boy is now officially and legally registered as “Pedro.”

The mother and the father are my loving parents, and I am their baby boy.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t aware of what I will be going through because of my name. Buboy is my nickname, which is common among Bicolano little boys. I was comfortable with my real name until I become an adolescent when I was teased and bullied because of it.

Since then, when I hear someone call my name, my mind rejects that Pedro is my name. I don’t know why my auditory organ cannot process and give signals to my brain that someone is calling me with my real name; it’s strange but true.

After all that happened, I started to ask my mom about why I have “Pedro” as my name. She started to tell the story and she mentioned that I should have been Daniel or Dante to follow the same pattern of the first letter of the names of my siblings.

When I was in my high school, I learned that my name is a biblical name. Peter, the rock, the apostle. I started to feel good about my name since I was also attending Sunday mass and singing with the church choir.

Confidence shot up again as I gained a lot of friends in the neighborhood and in the school community. Friends would call me Peter, Buboy, or Boy for short. My sisters would also play with my name when they call me “Negro” because of my dark skin tone. I actually love it when my sisters call me that name as a term of endearment for their youngest sibling. My nephews and nieces would call me “Tito Buboy.” It sounded very pleasing to my ears.

When Internet came, I created an email account and used BUBOYZONE as my username. I coined my nickname Buboy with the famous boy band Boyzone to give my pet name some class.

As I went on with my life, I met a lot of special people whom I considered as my best friends. I started to have a fruitful career in teaching young minds. All of them call me Buboy. I comfortably accepted it as my name.

At one point in my life, I thought about changing my name legally. I asked lawyers about the tedious process I have to undertake to change my name. The law says that I cannot have a totally different name. My new name should be at least the name I grew up with. I thought that Buboy is not a professional sounding name. Since I am in the academe, Buboy to me is not so appropriate. I dumped the idea and moved on with my life.

In the early years of my profession as a teacher, my students would tell me that my name “Pedro” is not “bagay” to my personality. I don’t know why they came up with that idea, but I believe them. Since I am now teaching in an Arab land, some Arabs I know even say that my name sounds sexy to them. That was an idea I really can’t understand. I take it as a compliment thou.

Right now, I do not think much about my name. It is just a name. The most important thing is that I live with the meaning of my name. The rock! The strong, hard, smooth, rough, dark, big and small that I am.

By the way, my whole name is Pedro Mercado Ocampo, Jr. It sounds very Hispanic ha!

First-Day-of-Class Speech SY 2009-2010

Here is another speech i made for this school year. Whenever i deliver the speech, I will always receive a big round of applause. hehehe! Read more and enjoy! Hope you will get something from this speech.

Here it goes...

Two school years had past… a new academic year is just right here.

Good morning/afternoon class!

This is my third time that I will do this first-day-of-class speech. This is not something new to you already. I guess you are waiting for this also.

Today is the start of another chapter of our lives, another part of us as a person will be grow, another leaf on our stem of experiences will soon emerge that will make us a better person.

Speaking of experiences, I gained a lot of them during the previous school year. Good and bad experiences, forget the bad but learn from it and cherish the good ones. Experiences of a teacher beyond being a teacher.

Contemplating on these experiences during the entire vacation, I encapsulated my thoughts on the following sentences.

Preparing students today for tomorrow's workforce has a lot to do with teaching about how to use and evaluate knowledge. The Internet is rapidly becoming the biggest repository of information we have ever known. The key will be in our ability to find, evaluate and use the information it provides. I need to teach analytical and organizational skills. Students must know how to evaluate data. Gone are then days when students spent their time memorizing facts that were readily available at their fingertips. Students need to learn communication and study skills. I must give them the type of tools that prepare them for lifelong learning, so they know how to study and how to evaluate the importance of what they learn.

Little by little, I am trying to do everything to teach my students on how life is, how life goes and how to live life and use everything to make life worthy to cherish.

There was one incident last year that I cannot forget. An experience you will never earn from just reading and memorizing facts. I even shared this story to my co-workers and it really touched my heart and my well being.

One morning, when I was proctoring an examination in a particular section, fourth year virtuous to be exact, I experienced the most memorable encounter I had with a student. On the midst of thinking if I am a good or a bad teacher, there was this young boy God touched to answer my prayer.

After the examination, its recess time. Most of the students left the classroom to go to the canteen for their snacks. One quiet boy suddenly walked towards the teachers table where I was seated. He suddenly bring out a Rebisco sandwich from his pocket and gave it to me saying “Sir, para po sa inyo, partner po sa kape nio.” My eyes begun to secrete water called tears. I was overwhelmed but I hid it. I don’t want other students to say that I was OA. But what can I do? It was a genuine feeling a human being can feel on a particular situation.

I was so delighted to realize how much I was happy to receive the biscuit. I never thought that boy would do such thing. It was an act of kindness and care of a student to his teacher. Right there and then, I said to my self that at least I am 50% good and 50% bad teacher…hehehe! But this student saw and appreciated the 50% of my goodness as a teacher.

Today is the start of another school year, another year of challenges, hardships, success and failure in your studies. Again, just like what I said last year, one thing is for sure; you will all be educated not only with facts and lessons but also will be filled with life’s greatest values and treasures.
Being a teacher is not all about knowing a lot, but being able to reach, motivate and inspire the other person (exactly what most teachers lack, including me).

Let me end this speech with these statements.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.

First-Day-of-Class Speech

Here is a speech i wrote for the opening of the School Year 2008-2009. Please read and enjoy. I may be harsh on this but its effective.

FIRST DAY OF CLASSES SPEECH
SY 2008-2009

“As long as you can affect the life of one child, you have been a success.”

Good morning everyone!

To this day, I do not like that quote. As a teacher I feel I have to approach education with the determination to affect each and every one of my students. The mentality of achieving “success” after reaching one child is not enough. I approach each year with the knowledge that I have only one year to make a life’s worth of difference in each child in this classroom, and I give it everything I’ve got.

When I did my speech last year, I told you that …

“I don’t care if you don’t like me. I couldn’t care less. Again, I am not here to be friends with any of you either. I have plenty of friends and I don’t need any more. I don’t care if you get mad and call me bad names in your mind. You are more than welcome to do that, because my objective here isn’t to have you like me; it’s to have you learn. I care about each and every one of you, and I am dedicated and driven to giving you the best education possible. I want each of you to know that I am going to do whatever it takes to make that happen, and nothing is going to stand in my way.”

Do you still remember that? I hope so. I believe that, on one way or another, I made a difference in your life. Teaching Computer Education is not just teaching the latest technology and everything about computers. It is teaching you how to responsibly and effectively use computers. The truth is, you can still learn a lot in computers without me. With your easy access to computer and to the World Wide Web, you may learn a lot in basically anything you want to know about: facts, stories, history, mathematics, language, games, chatting etc. I guess you know more about these things more than I do.

I am here in front of you as a teacher willing to teach and willing to learn at the same time. Believe it or not, I learned a lot of things from you while you learn from me. I learned to be a little generous about giving something to anyone, would it be material things or even attention, affection and even love. I learned that Filipino children living in the land of camels, sand, sand storms, super hot summer, extremely cold winter, never ending sales in the malls and some annoying Arabs is totally different to kids breathing the polluted air, hurdling traffic, wasting time in internet cafes for net gaming, cell phone addicts, trying hard fashionistas, and fashion victims in the Philippines.

This school year is another year of challenges, hardships, success and failure in your studies. One thing is for sure; you will all be educated not only with facts and lessons but also will be filled with life’s greatest values and treasures.

Let me end this speech with this quotation from Alec Bourne and it goes something like this: “It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.”

Thank you, good luck and welcome to another excitement and challenge -filled school year!

My new Blog

Hi...i am now here writing a new post for my new blogsite. I have not been editing my previous blogsite that's why i can't remember anymore my password etc. So I decided to create another one. But this time, i will try to put new post on this.

Lately I have discovered that I can (at least) write. hehehe! I want to use it here so that i can express myself on any topic i want.

I will post some of my works here. I have i guess, 5 already on my list. I will try to post it today or some other day. But definitely not next year. Enough of not editing my blog. This time i will try to write as much as possible on anything i want or discovered.

Please read my blog and try to write a comment too.