Written by Julianne Afable

The current shift from traditional learning set up to online channels  has posed challenges not only to student’s access but also to instructors’ capability in delivering lessons in an online mode of teaching. Issues of access to resources, competencies, and most importantly copyright laws were highlighted in the open discussion organized by the UP Internet Freedom Network last April 23, 2021. The UP Internet Freedom Network invited educators to talk about their experiences in creating course packs amidst lack of resources and copyright issues in the context of commercialized and colonial type of education in the country.

Ms. Julienne Urrea, basic education instructor who teaches English subjects at the UP Rural High School discussed the challenges faced by basic education instructors in the shift to online learning. She shared personal experience and meaningful conversations with her colleagues on navigating the new platform in a basic education institution that even before the pandemic had been making do with limited resources available to students and instructors.

Urrea talked about the grueling task of producing course packs sighting that teaching and creating instructional materials are two different competencies and the way that teachers were made to come up with learning materials with very limited time and resources have been barriers to delivering lessons to students in basic education who have very different needs compared to college and graduate students. Furthermore, she discussed how the current orientation of the Philippine education system of being commercialized and colonial has been exposed by how content on Filipino subjects are limited on open education resources in contrast with resources on English and grammar, revealing the value placed on marketable skills in a third world country.

Mr. Jethro Daryl Pugal, the second speaker in the open discussion, is an instructor in the Philosophy Division in UP Los Baños. He gave light on the strategies that their division came up with in order to navigate existing fair use policies, eventually concluding that laws and policies that are currently in place do not exist in the favor of academic pursuits. He emphasized that democratizing institutions and education platforms would place information to the hands of those who can use them.

Third speaker Mr. Kennedy Limbo, a registered Engineer who is currently an instructor in Far Eastern University-Institute of Technology highlighted the difficulty of finding resources for a bio-engineering class, a relatively young discipline that he is teaching. Copyright laws, according to Limbo are limiting further access to resources. Coming from a private university, he notes that they surprisingly encounter the same problems public educational institutions have. Given the current situation of Philippine education where we are far from the 1:1 student to book ratio, we could just imagine how far worse the situation is in local universities in far flung areas of the country when even UP and FEU are having these problems, Limbo added.

I was too stubborn. My dad had specifically told me not to hold anything while I swing. But when you have a 6 year old kid in a messy yard without any parental supervision nearby, what do you get? Well, if the kid was well-behaved then maybe the only loss you would suffer from is a few coins for a snack to reward him. But if the child was as curious as I was, then I bet you’d suffer from major disasters.

 We lived in a compound in Canlubang, Calamba for almost half a year. The neighbourhood looked like multiple houses squished together to make the ultimate house sandwich. The roads were a bit too narrow for raging vehicles passing by and busy people wandering about. A couple of blocks away, you’d find a school for elementary kids called Mary Belle Montessori School Annex. That’s why you’d see a bunch of kids playing in the streets wherever you’d look.

 I didn’t have that much friends so I spent most of my time inside the borders of our yard. I was always jealous of the other kids playing outside, from the muddy puddles when it’s raining to the sunny afternoons at slides. My dad noticed this and so he created my own personal playground in our yard. He placed a swing about a meter away from our unused second door and a seesaw by the mango tree in front of our house.

 One day, my dad was talking with some of our neighbours outside. It was a Thursday. It was getting pretty boring. There was no internet (it was 2006), I wasn’t allowed to use our computer at that age (not that I even knew how to use one) and my mom was using her cell phone inside (the one with the funny snake games). I had to do something to spice things up, I remember thinking. Looking around, I recall spotting our broken bike, some kittens in a carton box, and my dad’s technical tools used for fixing stuff and tinkering with broken equipment from the junkshop. Then I saw the steel curtain rods lying down by the yard in different lengths. Curiously, I took the shortest one, maybe less than a meter long.

 I was a very creative child, with a vivid gift for imagination. Holding the rod, I tried to feel like Moses parting the red sea with his staff, the fairy godmother in Cinderella with her bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, a black belt in karate with the high kicks and the heeyaaaaahs. And then I thought, “I wanna fly. I’d be Superman or Peter Pan or maybe even Mary Poppins.” And with that, I hopped on the swing facing the door, rod in hand, about to make one of the stupidest decisions in my life. In one, two, three, one, two, three, swing, the rod jabbed the door and went straight back to my left eye. I screamed. I was proud of the fact that I didn’t cry (or maybe the tears just couldn’t come out because of the injury). My dad came rushing inside the yard and I ran to meet him in a frightened and guilty embrace, screaming and apologizing. Everything was a blur after that. Figuratively. And literally. For a long time.

 What I do remember is that I had an eye patch for a week (“Arrrrrrgh. You’re a pirate,” my older brother teased.).We couldn’t find any hospital that could accommodate us due to the lack of ophthalmologists in Calamba and so we were referred to St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon where I was admitted for about 3 months.

 It turned out that my cornea was bent and ripped that I had to undergo surgery where they would sew it back to my eye (“Bloody, gore and gross,” my older sister said.). My mother was reluctant to agree to the operation at first but did anyway, realizing we didn’t have any other options than that or me going blind.

 Fortunately, it was successful. But from then on until now I have to wear glasses if I want to make the world look clearer. I have to change my lens from time to time to adjust to my depleting vision. It’s interesting to see the world without glasses however, like looking at a blotted oil-painted canvas. Sometimes I take my glasses off to escape from reality and to pretend like I’m still in 2006. But then I get dizzy afterwards so I have to put my glasses back on.

 I guess I didn’t really understand the weight of the situation at the time. But looking back, I couldn’t imagine how terrible my parents must have had felt. We had enough troubles already, financially and a few other family issues. But I don’t remember them scolding me even once for what I did. I remember my mom buying me expensive yema from the hospital’s cafeteria whenever she noticed that I wanted to cry. My dad always brought grapes whenever I asked. I also remember their friends visiting and leaving gifts behind. Sure, I felt guilty but they didn’t make me want to feel worse. Up to this day, my parents put all their gratitude to God and our spirituality for helping us get through this difficulty. But for me, I’m thankful for them the most.

 If I could turn back the time however, I don’t think I’d change anything. We’ve all learned a lot from that experience and it made me who I am today.  Even my father keeps getting teary-eyed whenever he tells the story during special occasions.  I was able to overcome other challenges because of that. I can’t even imagine myself without glasses anymore. Of course, it meant buying new frames or lenses every two years or so. But I’m thankful that I began to see the world differently. Again, figuratively. And literally. I’d be lying if I said that I stopped doing stupid things after that but I can definitely say that I’m trying my best so as not to let my actions affect others negatively. I guess I’ve learned the importance of thinking twice before doing anything.  

 So, what do you get when you have a curious 6-year old kid in a messy yard with a rod and a swing without any parental supervision nearby? Possible answers include: blurry vision, an eye patch, glasses, an empty bank account and a pocketful of lessons and stories you could share and laugh at 12 years later – basically, trouble.

Imagine three scenarios. 

First scenario: You can’t breathe. It’s a cold Friday night and you’re locked in your room, covered in blankets, watching sad movies on your laptop, one pint of ice cream on one hand and a spoon on the other, and your tears are falling down your cheeks as you barely swallow and force the sweet goodness down your throat. You cry yourself to sleep. The next day, you don’t want to get out of the house or even get up from bed. But when you finally do, not because you want to but because you have to and because you realize that you have responsibilities that are more important than your breaking heart, you carry on with your daily activities numb, floating, and dreaming. Then you see that someone, the reason why you’re in such a mess in the first place, seeming to be doing a lot better than you. Heck, that person’s with someone else, and you start to question what was so wrong with you that you just can’t be enough. And now you feel that tug on your stomach, your heart skipping a beat, and the shortening of your breath. Anger. Sadness. Loneliness.   

Second scenario: You saw it happen yourself. Shock. Panic. Stop. At first you couldn’t think straight until your shaking fingers dialled buttons and your trembling voice called for help. But it was too late. You lost someone you love. You suddenly feel nauseous, like you’re about to faint. Days after the funeral, people come by and ask you how you’re doing and you answer with the easiest, typical words you could muster. You still can’t believe it. You unconsciously notice things that remind you of that person – clothes, pictures, a certain smell, a time of the day, a date in your calendar, a special place – everywhere. Each thing would trigger a distant memory, a small detail you’re scared to forget and would rather not or at least not yet. And each trigger would come with chest pains. Grief. Sadness. Loneliness.

Third scenario: The streets are dangerous after it hits 6:30 p.m. The road on your way home is famous for a lot of unfortunate events related to crime and sadly for you, your shift ends at 7:00 p.m., meaning you had to walk to your house alone on a very dark and scary path every day. Carrying your keys between your fingers to try to protect yourself from whatever fearsome obstacle or person attacks you, you try to walk faster. You had a stressful day and all you want is to go home and finally get some rest. Almost tiptoeing upon arrival, when you were about to take a breather, opening the lights to your living room, SURPRISE. A crowd consisting of your friends, family and neighbours surprise you with raised voices, a cake and party decorations. Stress. Fear. Shock. Before you could register what’s happening, you find your vision starting to blur and just like that you can’t see anything.

Are any of these scenarios familiar? Maybe you’ve seen such scenes from a movie or maybe you’ve experienced some of them in real life. Between these three situations, there is something similar and odd that happens after experiencing emotional chaos – the physical pain. Some people would consider such pain normal even though they really couldn’t understand the reason why it occurs. Actually, in such occurrences it is possible that you are experiencing a medical condition called stress cardiomyopathy, better known as the Broken Heart Syndrome.

The Broken Heart Syndrome is a condition wherein extreme emotional or physical stress could lead to rapid and severe heart muscle weakness. Its symptoms could be similar to those of heart attack patients which include:

 ·         chest pain

·         shortness of breath

·         dizziness

·         low blood pressure

·         congestive heart failure

·         Arrhythmias or irregular heartbeats

 Such symptoms follow just minutes to hours after the person has experienced intense, and often unexpected, stressful situations.

Despite having similar symptoms, this condition is different from a heart attack. Unlike heart attacks, tests show no signs of blockages in the coronary arteries. Blood tests also show no to mild signs of heart damage. The electrocardiogram (EKG) results don’t look the same either.  

Johns Hopkins Medicine states that in order to understand this condition, one must first define “stress”. Stress is the response of an individual’s body to things that it considers abnormal, including physical abnormalities. When these occur, the body produces hormones and proteins that would help to cope with the stress. For example, in the third scenario earlier, in experiencing shock after extreme fear, the body produces huge amounts of adrenaline to try to defend oneself or escape danger. Due to the sudden surge of stress hormones, or in the case mentioned, adrenaline; the left ventricle, the main heart chamber that pumps blood out to the rest of the body, becomes stunned and enlarges, causing the heart to freeze temporarily leading to poor blood circulation and symptoms that are almost indistinguishable from acute coronary syndrome.

This condition is often triggered by sudden situations that elicit extreme emotions, whether positive or negative. It is also possible that drugs could cause a surge of stress hormones though these only happen in rare cases. Such drugs include:

 •           Epinephrine (EpiPen, EpiPen Jr.), which is used to treat severe allergic reactions or a severe asthma attack

•           Duloxetine (Cymbalta), a medication given to treat nerve problems in people with diabetes, or as a treatment for depression

•           Venlafaxine (Effexor XR), which is a treatment for depression

•           Levothyroxine (Synthroid, Levoxyl), a drug given to people whose thyroid glands don't work properly

 The situation could become quite critical if the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. It can be life threatening since this syndrome involves severe heart muscle weakness that could also cause heart rhythm abnormalities.

Studies suggest that menopausal women, particularly those in their sixties and seventies have increased risk for broken heart syndrome. People with previous history of heart disease, neurological disorders, and psychiatric disorders also have higher chances of acquiring this condition.  

The good news is that broken heart syndrome is usually treatable and temporary. The effects of the syndrome on the heart are completely reversible as one of the main features of this condition is that the heart is only weakened for a brief period of time with no long-term damage. Since the syndrome improves quickly, if assisted by physicians familiar with this condition, patients tend to make a quick and complete recovery. Initial treatment usually aims to improve blood circulation to the heart. Further treatment may include medicines and lifestyle changes like improving one’s physical and emotional health.

Learning how to manage stress and cope with problems could help in the prevention of this syndrome along with surrounding oneself with supportive people that are easy to share feelings or concerns with.

Sa mga canteen ay may iba't ibang pamimilian na pagkain. Sa pagkakataong ito, may iba't ibang uri naman ng mamimili ng pagkain sa canteen.

 Bakit nga ba namumukod-tangi ang canteen ng Rural? Dito, nabubuo ang iba't ibang mga samahan at kwento ng ligawan, ang sabay-sabay na pag-aaral habang kumakain ng almusal, at ang inaabangang work service ng mga seniors. Dito, magkakaibigan ang mga estudyante at ang staff. Sa bawat pag-abot ng bayad ay may sukli itong ngiti at saya sa mga mamimili. Kung sa mga magkakaibigan ay may mga roles ang bawat tao sa loob ng tropa o barkada, kapag pumasok ang isang indibidwal sa Rural canteen, may role din siyang ginagampanan.

Iilan lamang ang mga sumusunod sa mga karaniwang tipo ng mamimiling makakasalubong mo sa canteen ng Rural araw-araw.

Tahimik - Bingbong Badillo

Lyrics: 

TILA ISANG PANAGINIP LANG ANG NAGDAAN  KANINA KAUSAP LAMANG KITA NG WALANG HANGGAN  NGAYON AY TAHIMIK NA NAKAUPO SA TABI  AKALA KO AY MAPAGMAMASDAN PA KITA NG SANDALI  NATATAKOT LANG AKONG BAKA HINDI MO PA ALAM  DI NA BIRO PARA SAKIN ANG MULI PANG MASAKTAN  TIKOM ANG BIBIG SA ATING PAG-IBIG  HABANG TUMATAGAL, LALO AKONG NAPAPAGAL  IKAW ANG HIMIG  DINIG BA ANG TINIG KO  MATAGAL NA AKONG NANDITO.  ANG HIRAP NG PAKIRAMDAM SA TUWING KASAMA KA  HINDI KO MALAMAN KUNG SAN BA AKO DAPAT MAGSIMULA  KUNG KELAN PA NAGKAROON NG LAKAS NG LOOB  SAKA KA NAMAN AAYAIN NG YONG INIIROG  KUNG MAY DAPAT MANG SISIHIN AY AKO'T AKO LAMANG  SA AWITING ITO, LAHAT SANA'Y IYONG MARAMDAMAN  TIKOM ANG BIBIG SA ATING PAG-IBIG  HABANG TUMATAGAL, LALO AKONG NAPAPAGAL  IKAW ANG HIMIG  DINIG BA ANG TINIG KO  MATAGAL NA AKONG NANDITO.  KUNG MAY PAG ASA PA,  AY YAYAKAPIN KA  KAHIT ISANG SAGLIT  LAHAT ITO AY PANAGANIP TIKOM ANG BIBIG SA ATING PAG-IBIG  HABANG TUMATAGAL, LALO AKONG NAPAPAGAL  IKAW ANG HIMIG  DINIG BA ANG TINIG KO  MATAGAL NA AKONG... TIKOM ANG BIBIG SA ATING PAG-IBIG  HABANG TUMATAGAL, LALO AKONG NAPAPAGAL  IKAW ANG HIMIG  DINIG BA ANG TINIG KO  MATAGAL NA AKONG NANDITO.