Who says that if you’re not that good at something, there’s no more way for you to achieve your dream? We all felt this and I am no exclusion. Since I was a kid, I used to draw anything that comes into my mind. At my young age, my family saw a potential in me with this endeavor so, I expected and believed that someday, I’ll be a great artist. But time flew fast, I discovered that I am just a mediocre telling myself that it was just a hobby and there is nothing essential it will bring me.
Until I became a full-pledged teacher, this is something that I don’t give much attention for I think that preschoolers and sixth graders are just so appreciative of what their teachers can do. Once they recognize the object I draw on the board or on any instructional material that I made, it is already an incomparable joy for me.
Things change when my principal assigned me to handle our school paper. I had no idea of what it’s like to be a School Paper Adviser (SPA). Eventually, my heart started to love my extra assignment. As I train and coach young minds in this mind-numbing task, I the desire to teach them more stirred my soul. In a school paper organization which we call “Young Writers’ Club”, you don’t just ask them to join without aiming for a goal. Most of them will join with no idea at all. They are like deer that long for water. Young minds that need to be shaped and filled. The big responsibility is on my part as their trainer.
The big question on my mind is how can I give them the trainings they need if I myself does not excel in a particular skill. I just want to give you an idea how we do trainings in campus journalism in elementary grades. Journalism covers a wide range of skills to be developed in each child. You need to discover in them the talents that lives within, but before you will be able to unleash them, it will require you to expose all of them in the different areas of technical writing such as, news writing, science and health writing, feature writing, sports writing, editorial writing, and of course, editorial cartooning. Cartooning, though drawing is my passion since I was a kid, is really different from mere drawing. It must be done in a way that discusses a certain issue by just looking at it.
I was really challenged but I came to realize that it’s not the skill which motivates the learners to be an excellent cartoonist. It’s about teaching them with all your heart, your dedication and passion. Together with some fellow School Paper Advisers, it’s a fulfilment when you see the eyes of your learners wanting to improve themselves each day, the confidence they gain after winning the competitions and going to higher levels because of the time you invested for them to achieve their own dreams. With this, I can say that their achievements are my greatest accomplishments too.
