How I Ended up Taking BSED

What do you want to be when you grow up?

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This is one of the questions that Kindergarten and Elementary school teachers frequently ask their students to know about their pupils' dreams.

Of course, these kids would say “I'd like to be a pilot/teacher/president of the Philippines, etc.”. These are kids' plans for the future. While some of them would get their dream jobs, some wouldn't.

When my Kindergarten teacher asked me this question more than twenty years ago, I told her I'd like to be an engineer. Nobody explained what an engineer is, and how vast this field could be. I didn't have any idea about geodetic engineer, computer engineer, mechanical engineer or civil engineer. Engineer. Period.

On our graduation ceremony, we had an “introduction of the graduates” part. The class which consisted with 20 students) were grouped into five. Each pupil had to introduce themselves like “My name is ____, from Taguig, Metro Manila (although all of us were from Taguig) and when I grow up, I want to be a _____”. When it was my turn, I said “My name is Ivony from Taguig, Metro Manila. When I grow up, I want to be a teacher”.

Why did I change my mind? As far as I could remember, one of my classmates told me that it would be very difficult for me to be an engineer because I was very small, and I needed to go up and down the building, build it, carry the equipments and the cement, gravel and sand all by myself. Gullible as I was, I changed the script that my mother had written for me. I couldn't remember whether I had made my mother upset or not; I just remembered that she and my father were very happy at that day because I received an award.

Fast forward to 1993; after seeing a beautiful nurse wearing her white uniform with white stockings and white shoes, and after appreciating her beauty and kindness, I decided to become one. I wanted to take care of the sick people and be as pretty as I could ever imagine. But another classmate of mine discouraged me by saying I would be the one to take care people in the emergency room, with bloody clothes, with one or more missing body parts. And of course, as gullible as a child could be, I believed him. Then at that same year, my dad got a motorcycle accident. I witnessed how difficult it was for my mother to take care of him. Being a daddy's girl, I wanted to take care of my father, that's why I decided to be a doctor. Just like my dream to be an engineer, I hadn't thought of what kind of a doctor I wanted to be. My desire to be a doctor became stronger when I wore my cute “doctor costume”, complete with stethoscope and syringe set as I played as a young doctor on our “Community Helpers” presentation. I even brought my costume and pictures when my family (minus Irish and Bunso) had a vacation in Davao and Misamis Oriental (my father and mother's hometown, respectively) to show off. I remembered, when we were about to go to Cagayan de Oro, my paternal grandfather told me to take Education in college because studying Medicine was not that easy and because he wanted to add more teachers in our clan.

I've never wanted to fulfill my grandfather's wish. At that time, I really wanted to be a doctor. However, I discovered that I had a hemophobia. After cleaning my shoes, I stood up without checking my surroundings and all of a sudden, the left part of my forehead (just beside the tip of my left eyebrow down the tip of my left eye) bumped against the corner of the kitchen sink. I felt dizzy and when I checked the mirror, blood was already coming out. I was just lucky because my mom was there. Because of the incident, my dream of being a doctor vanished.

I had my first on-the-the-job teacher training when I was very young. When I was a child, I played role-playing game with my younger sisters: they'd act as my students and I'd be their teacher. Sometimes, I'd be the teacher and our stuffed toys and dolls would be the students. Oh yes, young as I was, I already had my own way to compute grades, and I already had an idea of giving awards.

Other than that, my younger sister and my friends would ask my help if they had assignments or projects. There were times that I had been asked to do peer-to-peer tutoring and classroom teaching if one of the teachers was not around, and I never complained because for some unexplainable reasons, I felt happy.

In high school, I dreamed to be a journalist or a novelist because of my long-time crush. He was so talented that our teachers often praise him. For me, he was a genius because he was not only good at writing but also at drawing and painting. I learned the fundamental skills of campus journalism except writing sports news which I sucked at. I wrote poems about love, nature, teaching and others. I joined essay writing contests. I tried to write scripts and short teen fiction. I planned to take Mass Communication major in Journalism. However, my parents objected when Mr. Danny Hernandez was killed and the others were kidnapped. My mother suggested me to take Education or Psychology instead.

In my last year in high school, I thought of becoming a lawyer because of my Social Studies teacher. He was really a nice teacher. He was a disciplinarian like my father but he was very sympathetic and he did his best to bring out the best in us. I remembered, he was one of my crushes when I was a freshman. My friends and I even thought he was still single and some of them were jealous of me because being a "bibo" student, I was one of the students in our class who became one of his favorites during recitation. Of course, like any other student, I had also experienced punishment (like standing when I was not prepared for the class). I also had been reprimanded for being childish and not fulfilling my task as the class leader. Nevertheless, he was one of my inspirations to strive harder and to somehow become an effective teacher and to take Law subjects someday, if the timing is right.


Fast forward to 2002 (summer). Due to our former Pastor and some friends, my mother enrolled Education units in Center for Early Childhood Care and Development. For the first time, I witnessed how she juggled being being a mother, a wife and a student. At that time, I had already decided to enroll Journalism. However, I noticed how happy  she was when she was watching demo classes and teacher scripts on CD, and when she was acting like our teacher.  She kept encouraging me to study Education too!

And being an obedient daughter, I obliged. I took an exam in Philippine Normal University, the only university that I dreamed of since I had decided to become a teacher, and I passed. To avoid complications ( like assisting the pupils in going to the comfort room), I thought of taking Secondary Education, major in English (since there was a huge demand of English majors then). I had a second thought of taking Social Studies as my major due to the implementation of MAKABAYAN at that time ( I thought there would be less demand of Social Studies teacher at that time). God gave me another blessing when it was announced that I was one of the forty students, the pioneer batch, who passed the AFPSLAI scholarship program. Because of that, I was given a chance to study in a private school and in 2002, I was officially enrolled as a BSED (Bachelor of Secondary Education) student in Centro Escolar University.