Holy Week came after training, so I had a whole week to go back to my old ways (of staying indoors, binge watching tv series, and eating junk: it's a hard cycle to break). Again, my tendency to prepare things at the last minute is just beyond me, but as soon as I get around to doing it, I make sure that it will be done. I thought I had until April 17 to do things because the start of Batch 1 at our venue was not until April 18, but a last minute notification came the night of April 16, so I came to work the next day. I'm officially a swim teacher, with an i.d. and all that. I feel like I got a real-life blue check that verifies my status.
Assigned at Elizabeth Seton School Imus for the rest of the summer, Oyasumi scours not more than 9kms of the road from home. It definitely saves me time because I only bike for less than half an hour, but I truly miss just how familiar and convenient the way to Olivarez College Parañaque was. I miss a lot of things at that venue: the deep and spacious pool, how I can put my bike at our quarter and take pictures of it at the pool side, and how Coach Jon would treat his swim teachers for spanish bread as merienda (I'm sorry I failed to mention this in my previous post). I'm sure I can teach there again, if the universe wills it.
Monday, April 17, 2017. The text said that the shift today was from 8AM to 4PM. I got there at 7:30AM thinking of the 30-minute allowance*. I thought I was already late for the 7:30AM call time, but as it turns out, I'm the only swim teacher who showed. Janine, our venue secretary, was there beating me by four minutes. Coach Madel, our venue head, arrived at 8AM. There were no students yet, I don't even know why we had to come today. I thought I'd have to change into my swimwear and be in the pool as soon as I get there. I picked the wrong day not to wear deodorant. I was on marketing the first half of the shift, but I ended up filing for my payroll account in BPI around where Coach Madel and I were supposed to be giving flyers out at but didn't have the permit to. Then the teller saw from my letter that I'm a swim teacher and got interested in enrolling her daughter. So in essence, I still marketed. I got into the pool second half of the shift to practice my strokes until Kurt, a 10-year-old boy, came for an assessment. The pool just feels weird. Knees weak, arms are heavy, mom's spaghetti (the pool really felt heavy but maybe I'm just fat and I actually had leftover lasagna as my baon from Ate Joy's birthday). Rich and Fatima, my co-teachers, arrived about two hours before it was time to go home; Nikko wasn't around at all. It started raining and I realized that my favorite Tibay Araw-Araw raincoat from Bear Brand was among the things that got stolen from me. ☹ (Read: the hold-up robbery that got me stabbed in the arm on February 8, 2017).
(*Classes are from 8AM-5PM but there's a 30-minute allowance before and after work so our shifts start at 7:30AM-5:30PM. There's a 2-hour break which means that the 10 hours we spend being at the venue is left with 8 hours of work... but!!!!!! 30 minutes of that 2-hour break is supposed to be spent getting ready for the last half of the shift. If you think about it, the 1 hour is your actual unpaid lunch break and the remaining 30 minutes is really a rightful break--usually parted into two: 15 minutes--in a normal work setting).
Tuesday, April 18, 2017. First day of the first batch of swim students here at Elizabeth Seton School and I'm stoked! I had to re-review the lesson plan, thinking I shouldn't be a fuck-up on my first official work day, considering I'm the only newbie there (everyone assigned at Elizabeth Seton School has been a Bert Lozada Swim School employee before). A week of complete bumming out just erases all of what you've practiced, y'know. I started all my classes the same as per the lesson plan, the only difference is its degree and pace depending on the age groups of my class. For my first class, I got a group of four lovely 8-year-old girls who are even classmates at their academy: Yvonne, Cheska, Leanne, and Rachel. I liked most of my classes but at the end of the day, no matter how much I want to apply myself and make the lesson fun and educational, I get cranky. I get cranky because I've been there too long, I've been awake too long, and I'm tired. Imagine how early you'd have to get up to prepare for the day and be on time for work only to render 10 hours of your day there and be compensated for 8. And when you get home, there's barely enough time to do anything so you'll just go straight to bed. I have always thought that a 6-hour a day work is even already too much; 8 hours is working to wither away. The Netherlands have realized it: less time, better work quality, more productivity, healthier people. I believe we can all prosper in that, as an individual and as a union. (I sound like I'm complaining; this really has been one of my life-long beliefs and one of the things I fight for--a better life for everyone not just for one sector, and in essence, a better world).
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| My 2-3PM class. Thank you Sofia, Ihra, and Mielle. You guys motivate and direct me to be the person I've always wanted to be! |
Friday, April 21, 2017. I was an hour early today with the plan to do laps, inspired by the school's swim team's rigorous training and gorgeous bods but they had an early morning training so I wasn't able to do what I had planned until lunchtime. I felt like my zero tardiness and early arrivals was getting unnoted/noted incorrectly when Janine decided to fill in her time in and out backlogs right when we were about to get home. Why would you do that now when you could've done that earlier or real-time, then you expect us to remember what time we came and left from all the other days. It's 5:30PM, man. I just wanna go home.
Saturday, April 22, 2017. Yep, there's six days of work in a week. Corporations don't care for our health, they exhaust us and then dispose of us as soon as we're not useful anymore. I love being a swim teacher and I love seeing kids learn, but I need time to refresh. I feel burned out and robbed of life.
Monday, April 24, 2017. In my pursuit to waste no second of the kids' hour, I tend to reprimand those who delay the class (sometimes by taking too long to put their goggles on and repeatedly doing so). But as I learned to be less anxious, I felt the kids being more comfortable with me and more willing to listen.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017. We assessed our students through their progress report cards during lunch. It was supposed to be done on Saturday but nobody did it, and because I was new, I didn't know that you were supposed to do that on the fifth day. The students are classified into age groups and certain abilities. Snapper 1 are little kids aged 3-5 with zero knowledge in swimming and are usually scared to submerge in the water. Snapper 2 are little kids aged 5-7 who enjoy being in the water and are more open to be taught the proper swim. Jammer 1 are kids aged 7-10 who may or may not be afraid of the water but are big enough to be taught the entire lesson plan and they can advance to Jammer 2 once they pass the program. Jammer 2 are basically teenage kids or the kids who passed Jammer 1, but I don't teach the Jammer 2 student classification because they have a different lesson plan that I have yet to be trained for. After assessing students, each of us contributed P100 to make for the kids' graduation for this batch. I don't think the funds should come from our own pockets, but I gave the only bill I had with me anyway. I didn't express my unwillingness to contribute (like Janine did, she really didn't want to contribute), I was nonchalant about it. It's kind of like... peer pressure. I know it's for the kids but why do we have to shoulder the cost? Why doesn't BLSS budget this in? In the afternoon, Cyril, a 6-year-old in my 3-4PM class, threw up his longganisa meal while we were doing a swim and I immediately caught the scent of it. I almost threw up myself but I managed to keep it cool. I asked him why he vomited, but he denied doing so. "Hindi naman po ako sumuka eh." Kid, I could literally see a longganisa chunk floating in the water right now. I asked him to go to the bathroom first in case he vomits again. When I got home, mum invited me over to her house for dinner because one of her friends from Japan was sleeping over; it was the first time I ate dinner after work (I usually go straight to bed). While I was there, I mentioned Cyril's vomiting and expressed my disgust. Then my mom told me I should remain kind no matter what because someone I work with already told my brother (who's also a swim teacher) that I have an attitude problem. I suspect that it was Coach Madel. I also suspect that it was because of last Friday's muddle (I went home not saying anything because I got a little pissed at the delay). I never said anything bad about them even if they have flaws they can easily correct but refuse to address, why would they say such a thing about me.
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| We packed the candies bought from our P100 contribution for the kids' loot bag come Graduation Day |
Thursday, April 27, 2017. I got some meds on the way to work and temporarily aided my upcoming coughs and colds. I just really need to rest. It was still a great day, though. I really love my kids and I take pride that I get to know them and become someone they feel connected to, as opposed to just someone who commands them to do things because I’m entitled their teacher. Yvonne, Cheska, and Leanne (Rachel dropped out after 3 days) had a class for 2 hours because they weren't going to be around for the graduation tomorrow. I didn't think it was a problem because I know they're gonna blend well with my next class. I confidently told Coach Madel that I can handle it (keyword: confidently). I even introduced them to [my 9:10AM-10:10AM class:] Erinne, Maya, and Angela, and y'know kids, they don’t hate unless it's instilled in their upbringing to be hateful or if they've been done wrong. Everybody was welcoming to one another. I was excited to play a game, but I first wanted to see how they would all swim together and then cut it by two afterwards. But then Coach Madel told Fatima to help me, and then suddenly Fatima was shouting commands and making them count to identify them in numbers. She just makes them swim and then instructs them to do bubbles after finishing a lap; that's not how I do things. I don't want my kids to feel like they're just being ordered around and when I make them do bubbles, I'm always included. That's how we bond and so I can make sure they're doing proper bubbles. She even told me, "Pag-swimmingin mo lang sila ng ganyan para mapagod." The goal is not to tire them out, though. That’s not what their very expensive tuition fee is for. But I couldn't and wouldn't argue because that will show a lack of unity among the teachers and, of course, I don't want the parents to lose confidence or feel like they've wasted their money. So I tried to follow what Fatima was doing until I made it my own. She did have some good methods and techniques that I could learn from, I just didn't like how disconnected it all felt. She refers to them by their count and that's everything I have tried to fight against: for them to be seen as just numbers. After the class, Yvonne's mother approached me and asked if I was still gonna be Yvonne's teacher if she decides to re-enroll. I said yes because that's what I was also told. So she said that she's definitely gonna re-enroll Yvonne. I felt that Yvonne’s mother really liked me because she saw how I handled the first hour of Yvonne, Cheska, and Leanne's class before I was overstepped by Fatima. When we were doing a final assessment on the students' progress report at lunch, Fatima can't even remember her students' names and kept asking who she's assessing. Then I told her, "Bakit kasi hindi mo inaalala mga estudyante mo?" She answered, "Hindi ko talaga tinatangka. Hindi naman kailangan." That's exactly the kind of teacher I hated when I was still in school. The teacher who just tells you what to do, but doesn't even grade your work properly because they can't remember you. But she does remember them in faces so it's only hard for her to recognize if the card doesn't have a picture in it.
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| Batch 1 Graduation Day: Aqua Code discussion |
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| Maya, one of my students, made these for me. She's also taking a cooking class; they were good! 👌 |
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| Carbs on carbs (I love cake so much huhu) |
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| My afternoon students! ❤❤❤ |
When all the graduations were done with, we--well, they (because I couldn't eat anymore; I was just so full)--proceeded to eating some more of what the parents brought. Then, we had a little open forum. I never speak up at these things unless I know I'm surrounded by people who can understand where I'm coming from, so I didn't air out my previous wonders about who among them might've said that I have an attitude problem, because by what they discuss on a daily basis, they probably talk smack about everyone and I'm really not all that special [of a topic]. Janine let out her frustrations about the hardships in the job, even cried while telling it. I respected her tears by simply listening to her vent out while some of the others were busy packing up food to go. Rich also told her challenges about being a first time swim teacher (if I'm not mistaken) because, although she has been a BLSS employee before, she mainly does administrative work. It wasn't as emotionally-charged as Janine's share but it was just as valid. I brought up my worries about not being confident in handling Jammer 2 for the next batch because some of my Jammer 1 students who passed the program have re-enrolled, so I'm seeking proper training for it. I don't think Coach Madel addressed it very well; she just gave me a sweep-under-the-carpet kind of advice by saying I should go over the latter part of the lesson plan for the first few days and she'll take it from there after. It's too much of a great day to stress that worry so I'm sweeping it under the carpet for now.
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| I still record my rides on Strava but they're all on private for security purposes. There's the total of what I biked for Batch 1. What I used to bike in a day, I now bike in two weeks 😂 |
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