my favorite teacher

March means many things to many people. But for most of us, it’s all about graduation. And when I think of graduation, I think of my favorite teacher.

I was lucky in the sense that I had excellent teachers, without exception, at Falcon Memorial Elementary School. I had excellent teachers too at Purisima School, most notably the SPC nuns: Sisters Suzette, Cecilia, and Carmen. I had excellent teachers too at the University of San Carlos, particularly Ms. Romeo, the speech goddess.

This is a tribute to my favorite teacher, coming as it does 30 years late.

She's prim and proper to begin with, but because her pleasant face rarely smiles, there's a certain mystery to her persona. But she's no snob, she's no typical “terror” teacher who paralyzes students with fear. And she's not mean.

The moment she enters the room, we fall into a hush. On the table she puts her things: the cellophane-covered yellow class record, the books, the rectangular red Maxam soap box that contains her eraser and chalk. And when she says, “Good morning, class,” that's when she begins to enthrall.

Hers is a unique teaching skill that makes a student realize that Math is not that hard as he thinks, that’s it’s not necessarily a curse. And so it is with patience and understanding that she guides us through angles, algebraic expressions, formulas, theorems and algorithms.

She teaches English too, making her a rarity in the context of a common assertion that English and Math don’t mix. Once, she called Isidro to give her an example of a sentence. He froze in his seat. But because she encouraged him to stand up and say something, Isidro rose and said, “I do not know, Ma’am.”

She wrote “I do not know, Ma’am.” on the board, looked at Isidro, and said, “Thank you Isidro for giving me an example of a sentence.”

The class applauded as Isidro scratched his head in confusion and embarassment!

She never raises her voice. Or scolds. When the class gets unruly, she doesn’t like students telling their classmates to keep quite because it makes things worse than they already are. She herself never says “Quiet!” or “Silence!” Instead she launches into her signature demolition method, which is this: she turns quiet, the chin grows tense with the skin at both sides expanding like a cobra’s, and the eyes blaze as she gazes at the culprit and holds it until all that remains is cold silence.

This is what I like about her. Other teachers impose discipline by being vocal and physical and still get mocked. My favorite teacher doesn't do any of that and yet inspires “fear” and respect.

Back then, my handwriting must’ve been excellent because she always requested me to reproduce the logarithm table on the board because we couldn’t buy it locally. And so while my classmates studied for the test, there I was, standing on the table and writing multi-digit values on rows and columns that occupied the two block boards’ length and width. And I say she’s fair because I never felt that my grade was unduly increased by such requests.

It was during our senior year when she transferred to a government school and Math for us was never as enjoyable as before.

The final scene in the movie The Emperor's Club shows William Hundert back at St. Benedict's Academy, teaching the Classics to a new class that includes Martin Blythe's son, who is proud that his father was once Hundert's student. In the early part of the movie, Hundert broke his stance on integrity when he privately decided to raise the grade on the final essay of one student, thus edging Blythe out of the top three contenders for the “Mr. Julius Ceasar” contest. But even if Blythe learned abut this, he still entrusted his son to Hundert because he was his favorite teacher.

If time allows, I'll do the same for Bugsy because I know he'll do fine with my favorite teacher: Ma’am Teresita Deliezo-Alaan!