A Teacher's Perspective in New York City

Can you share your thoughts about teaching, being a retired public school teacher of the City of New York?​

Teaching in New York City is unique.  The diploma that you carry with you and your previous experience can hardly be the only weapon that you can use in real teaching.  You meet diversified kinds of children based on their cultures and based on the way they react to teachers in general, and the learning processes.  You can hardly reach the child according to the ideal expectations that you have had in your mind before, when you took the education degree.

During the war, when you were 12 years, you lived on the mountains of Negros Occidental in the Philippines, because you were hiding from the Japanese soldiers.  There, on the mountains, you discovered petugo.  What is petugo?

There is a fruit, called petugo, like a betel nut, that exists, which I never expected to encounter.  It just grew around the village.  At that time of the war, we were thankful for something desperately needed because of the scarcity of medicine.  I had an ulcer on the leg, and my Mom asked the others for help.  She was told about petugo.  She was told to scrape the fruit and put the pulp over the wound.  In three days, the wound closed and started to heal.

You came to America in 1969.  What did it mean to you?  Can you be philosophical about it?

That was a new life in my journey of opportunity and betterment.

You love the Easter Parade that's held every year in New York City.  Why is that?

To me it is a symbol of man's resurrection itself.  That there is a better life that awaits us.

You're 86 years old now, and you are taking line dancing.  Do you feel strong at your age?

I feel strong physically and spiritually.  In light of new discoveries...I learn to discover new things that I did not experience before.