I’m handling an English 1 and journals will be required. It’s supposedly something that’d help students practice and me (or other teachers) to track the student’s progress in the development of their writing.

I gave my students two options – 1) use a filler notebook (I don’t like having to deal with a bulk of hulking notebooks) and 2) send me the URLs to their blogs.

I’m really a big fan of a paperless classroom. Over the course of my stay as an undergrad, I probably wasted paper amounting to a third of the Amazon in the forms of photocopied material, theses drafts, blue books (filled from cover to cover thanks to “explain fully” exam provisions) and sheaves of yellow paper. Getting to check their blogs and comment on them would eliminate the paper requirement.

Plus, to extend the discussion to other venues, I’ve recently made active the forums on this site. I’ll be using it to post other material and lecture notes for my classes. There’s also a special tambayan section a la Peyups to . Anyone from UP (students or alumni) who wants to join just contact me. In any case I’ve sealed off the sections exclusively for my classes (the ones that would contain assignments and notes) for my students’ privacy.

As for my in-class requirements, many still advise me to do all the composition work inside the class room and never give them written homework. It’s just too easy to lift things from the Net. While I don’t know with the less tech savvy but most of the things available to these kids for lifting from the Net is already indexed by our friend, Google. But then again, that’s added work for me and this makes in-class paperwork a more attractive option.

Well, honestly, I think things are bound to change with the recent tuition fee increase. So far, here are the demographics of freshmen in my classes 45% from science high schools, 45% from private schools (most of them from exclusive private schools) and the rest from national high schools. Paying 16-20k a semester isn’t helping the masa after all. I think the STFAP (the bracketing of tuition fee rates based on family income) is screwed as it is. But what can UP do? The Houses keep reenacting the damn budget despite the inflation costs!

So as I’ve been going over their initial compositions in response to the oh-so-ever cheesy questions – 1) Why did you enroll in English 1 and 2) What are your expectation. It’s surprising to find snarky (Please, cite me a dictionary that has this as an entry!) remarks in their work. It had me thinking if it’s the tail-end of teenage angst (emo?) in the works. Probably a forgivable oversight on their part on my practical purpose of trying to know their reasons so that I can adjust my syllabus to their needs. Maybe that was just too kind of me to have an open mind with regard to the syllabus.

I mean I could’ve just made them read excerpts from Gabriel Garcia Marquez as examples of description and narration (and make the class really feel like a hundred years of solitude) or make them read Chakravorti Spivak’s discourses on the voices of the subaltern for argumentation and watch them go “Huh?” or challenge their Catholic values with Bertrand Russell’s Is There a God? (What do you think, Benj? Should I?).

But no. I chose not to be the terror instructor and make the course enjoyable and practical for them. For the sake of those other kind essays, I might just not bombard them with those readings that made our minds bleed as an undergrad. But who knows what would happen down the line? I’d rather keep my options open. Oh yes, and there’s this kid who dared flaunt the high school from which s/he graduated. Like that really matters in UP.

Remember what Patton said, “”Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.”

Check out these other posts:

1. A UP Student’s Mom’s Letter to UP President Roman on the approval of the 300 percent tuition hike
2. A few new insights on blogging for literacy in the Philippine context
3. UP or Ateneo revisited
4. First day of classes and it’s Independence Day
5. Benchmarking the graduate