Life in the academe is like a canvas. When one enters the academe as a faculty member, the canvas is just a plain surface waiting to be painted on. It is then up to the faculty to paint on the canvas, to create a design, and to choose what color to use. It is only through painting that the canvas comes alive.
In conquering the white space, colors can do the trick.
The color purple symbolizes royalty and good judgment. It is a combination of red, the warmest color, and blue, the coolest color.
My personal preference for the color purple is a statement that may be effectively conveyed even in the absence of words.
Just like preference for a color, in my case purple, a teacher needs to advocate something. This advocacy radiates and can eventually have impact on the people outside oneself. Ideally, the teacher’s advocacy must be aligned with his or her expertise.
Student empowerment. Freedom with responsibility. Media Literacy. Originality.
These are the concepts I constantly adhere to. All of these are reflected on the decisions I make, on the projects I initiate, on the authentic activities I design for my students, on every innovation I introduce in class, on my researches, on the seminars and conventions I participate in, and even on the way I speak and the way I deal with people on a day-to-day basis.
Teachers don’t have to become walking dictionaries who can give people the correct meaning and right pronunciation of words. What they believe in is enough to make them a distinct character in the academe.
A teacher who advocates nothing is not a teacher. A teacher who seems to advocate everything is no good either.
Teachers have responsibilities to educate not only their students in a four-walled classroom at PS Building, but also all the people they come in contact with.
This is possible by explicitly advocating something.
Our advocacy, as teachers, will show, and students can easily pick it up.
Even if some people around me frown at the sight of the color purple, I still proudly say, “I love purple.” No matter how much other people condemn what we advocate, we have to stick to it until they become one of us. That’s the power of spillover effect.
The PURPLE story is about my advocacy as a member of the academe, and how I paint my career throughout my ten years at AUF.
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