Saturday, July 29, 2006

Absence = Excuse Letter

After more than one month of absence...

The first quarter will be over in 2 weeks, but still I haven't posted anything related about Pisay this schoolyear. I became very busy doing new duties in school: Math Club Adviser, Math Training Program for First Years (MTP1) Coach, and Class Adviser for Jasmin 2009 (it's my first time to be a class adviser, and Jasmin was also my section when I was a sophomore). I was also asked to be MaSKara's adviser (haha, even with my lack of talent). A lot of things have happened already regarding the said tasks (aside from teaching Geometry for the 3rd straight year). So I cannot recount all the events in this entry. Makes me think twice about maintaining a blog... I find it hard to find time to be online, though I still am interested to use the medium.

Math Club is fun. Many of my new and former students joined the club (maybe one of the reasons is that I'm the adviser), and a lot of freshmen are enthusiastic in joining too. If I'm not mistaken, the club doubled in number as compared to last year with my efforts to pull in a lot of applicants (with the help of the Club's Board of Directors). We had our First General Meeting last July 6, and our Acquaintance Party last July 20. Good food!

MTP1 is challenging. For two years, I was handling Math 6, the third year level elective slash training pool. This year, I'm handling the freshmen. We gave a diagnostic exam to the whole batch, and the scores of this test and their Math NCE Second Screening results were summed up. The Top 31 qualified for MTP1. More exams were given, and the Top 20 will move on in the Second Quarter, and only ten will remain by the Fourth Quarter (Math training with a hint of American Idol, hehe). Six members of MTP1 of batch 2010 (yep, 10 batches younger than I) competed already last Thursday (July 27) in the annual Australian Mathematics Competition held in St. Stephens High School. Results are out in October.

Being Jasmin's adviser is worthwhile. Having 30 kids as if they were your own is hard to imagine age-wise, but I somehow understand partially the feeling of a person with parental authority given the responsibilities. I see myself more as an older brother to them than as a parent, maybe because we still share the same pop culture. We meet weekly to discuss topics of the week (Disaster Prevention, Code of Conduct, Environmental Awareness, etc), but more about hearing feedback in their schooling and studies. Bulk of the work is yet to come (accomplishing report cards, consultation with parents, etc). We had our acquaintance party last July 21.

Geometry is Geometry.

This schoolyear appears to be my most exciting yet.

By the way, my first batch (07) are already seniors, so some of them asked me to do recommendation forms for their university applications (Ateneo). I did this last schoolyear already, but the process still strikes me as surreal. I'm flattered, though, that some of them want my reccomendation.

The First Quarter was full of suspension of classes. 2 days each were cancelled because of two typhoons (and SONA); 1 day for the annual fumigation; and one half-day for the annual National Science and Technology Week at the PTTC. To think the schoolyear kicked off on June 13, not on June 1 as the school usually do. May the Second Quarter be better, weather-wise.

I don't know when I can post an entry again.