Traces of life in this season of death

My dear,

I am very sure you are not expecting me to show up in your shores now, showering you with bunches of the flamencoesque bougainvillea and the Casablanca flower you so loved. You know how I stay away from crowds, especially during these couple of days that lead up to the day that we remember those who have lived among us and changed us. But in a twist of fate in this season of remembrance and gratitude, I found myself in an experience where I felt you inhabit my life in a way that made me remember the life that we lovingly lived rather than the death that separated us.

They were 25 of them this time. As usual, we pitched the Natural History Signs across the sprawling green grounds of this training center in Antipolo. The center was filled with corporate yuppies, figuring out how to get along well enough in their teams to be able to generate better services and goods for the public and some wealth for themselves. They would sometimes pass me and the teachers walking the grounds, discovering for ourselves in our Natural History Walk that the flowers did not exist until only 114 million years ago. The corporate fellows would listen and then move on, a little puzzled at what we were doing there.

I know I am confusing you again, starting my story in the middle. You know how I am when I get excited to share my stories with you. You see, there is this center with an awkwardly long name called the Meralco Management and Leadership Development Center Foundation (MMLDC) in Antipolo that is supposed to be separate from the big power company. They run a world-class training center and for reasons still unclear to me, they decided that they would train public school science teachers in the same center, which means that all the facilities that corporations pay for to train there, will be available to the teachers for free. They will stay there for three days and two nights, fed and housed, while they will make them remember their dignity and mission as teachers. And for some reason also still unclear to me, I am supposed to help them do that.

We started with Antipolo public schools because MMLDC wanted to start where they were. I think it is a good reflection of the fact that those people in MMLDC really know where they are. They were open to a whole new way of training the science teachers so we explored a set of ways that the teachers could discover the world for themselves. We figured that they have had enough of all those seminars where they were asked to write and revise their lesson plans and we were right. We were told that for decades, the government has been herding them by the hundreds to seminars, most of them even had to pay for themselves, only to sit there and listen to some speakers lecture on teaching methods.

The modules we designed primarily revolved around the perceptual tools available to everyone in observing Nature and exposing them to natural history. We basically wanted them to rediscover the world again through their senses, and their own sense of curiosity. We explained how Nobel-prize winning scientists discovered how we really smelled things and why we remember so much from certain smells much like I remember you and the sparkle in your eyes when I smell the Casablanca flower. My favorite is when I tell them that the way the textbooks explain how we are able to taste things (where we have regions in the tongue for sweet, sour, bitter and salty) is wrong! I show them research since 1991, on which biotech industries are now basing their products on, that there are no rigid regions in the tongue for those fundamental tastes. I make them realize that we are all creatures of light in the way we see things; how is it that we cannot hear a star being born and how we know the world when this layer of skin that separates us from the world, makes contact with a thorn, a breeze or fire. Then, instead of the preacher’s, or politician’s way of talking you into believing, I let them go and find wonder for themselves through walks according to the sense assigned to them and there, rediscover the world.

The Natural History Walk, at first, is always a problematic one, especially this latest batch’s turn when it was raining. I pushed through with the activity anyway, thinking that it would make the 4.6 billion-year walk through the planet’s life, more realistic. They feel life struggle as they follow the winding signposts that highlight the appearance of creatures, seas, mountains and air, through deep time. They catch their breaths negotiating some heights in the garden, and mud and puddles of water splashing on their feet. They come back to the room exhausted, quiet, reflective and hungry. They throw me a lot of questions that I try to answer but some of them, I just say I really do not know and show them possible ways to find out the answer.

On the third day, they are supposed to do a synthesis of what they have learned in three days. This is always a day of silent but deep fear for me since this is when we would find out if these science teachers, who told me themselves since Day 1 that they did not like science at all and found no connection between science and their lives or the lives of their students, have changed their minds. You and I may have had science news soaked in coffee over breakfast when you were still alive but these teachers came here thinking that Nature is "outdoors" and that science is a "skill" and a mere "subject" and could not understand then how three days could be devoted to a skill on what they all thought was a boring subject.

But you should have seen these teachers shine like the stars I showed them in planetarium experience we had when we showered them with images from the Hubble Space telescope on their second day. One group portrayed themselves as hilarious aliens in order to show and tell their boss in the planet where they came from, the wonders of this third rock from the Sun. One group I fondly remember synthesized their lessons within a revised Alice in Wonderland, depicting a child’s journey into Nature’s mysteries. One group, however, had me trying very hard to hold back my tears. It was so elegant and so simple but so profound. It was directed by a Chemistry teacher in a school called Boso-boso Extension School. Their presentation opened with their lone male in the group wrapped in toilet paper in the memorable pose of Rodin’s famous sculpture The Thinker. Slowly, The Thinker discovers his sense one by one as they remove the cover from his eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands. He reaches out to the mysteries of Nature folded in manila paper and unfolds them one by one as he turns so poignantly and elegantly in The Thinker’s pose and with a sparkle in his eyes and a new openness in the rest of his senses. The Thinker then flashes into the pose of Da Vinci’s Vitruvius Man.

I was speechless at the end of that presentation. I was overwhelmed at the possibilities realized when we inspire the teachers to discover the world and learn the interconnectedness of knowledge for themselves. I remembered you, walking without shoes, to first grade being taught how to read and being deeply inspired by your favorite teacher in Torres High School in your time.

So I hope you understand why, as usual, I never follow tradition, and visit markings of "death" like everyone else does on this season. I got held up by traces of life moving on, minds renewing themselves, rediscovering the world, in teachers who are supposed to open lives for young discovering minds. I cannot visit you where you are but in these lives of questing minds, I will always remember and be deeply grateful that you lived.

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