Arnel Francis

When I Dance... As I stretch a bundle of muscle in my body, I rejoice on how wondrous work of ART I could make. Every twists, every turns and bends could come in precision...A breathing, that is sometimes short, lifts me up as I heave upon an opium of JOY to sustain... a momentary delusion that I can be what I want to be. There is this sudden stupor that I forget the ‘outside world and the ‘worries’ it brings and focus only in the NOW, the physical pain . There is an unequal joy of convincing myself that I have gotten close to what is being asked ..Enduring, panting, sweating, arms,legs and bodies battling to cross in delirium yet creating not chaos but harmony. What’s next.??..I panic..”Better not think”, I sometimes tell myself. Let the moment decide. So I just glide in the euphoric beat of the music, which sometimes only my heart could hear... The muscle now repays the trust. Yes. “The demands of DANCE is no far greater than the demands of LIFE”, On Dance Dance class for me is a day...

Foreign language learning is experiential. It ferries learners on a big bus ride where they may ‘see’ more along the way rather than what they benefit upon reaching their destination. Teachers should see it as pragmatic, valuing the content of their course- seeking and reflecting on why they need to learn the language and what they need to learn in the language. My experience for five years on different classroom settings and different cognitive levels of learners gave me the nudge to go FUNCTIONAL. I always tell my students the old adage of linguists, ‘the language you use is the language you know’..For what better way can we really assess the competence of our learners if they cannot use it outside the four corners of their ‘warm’ yet predictable classroom. I put a challenge more on developing students’ lingual ability. As I entered Graduate School (as a student in Language Teaching), my practice and beliefs were strengthened. I was no adherent of the Grammatical approach, not that ...

As somebody new in handling Environmental Science for an International School, the fear of being tagged as inept on the subject pushed me to rummage for the ‘latest’ reference in our friendly librarian’s counter. In the pile of books where she led me, was a softbound one, atypically large for a College textbook, still tied in straw and obviously in the process of ordering approval. It was thick with gray pages in newsprint and with words “for sale in the Philippines only” adorning the cover with intention. Like a child eager to gobble its first Nursery book, I swooned over the pages quick when in minutes I realized that the dampness I felt in my palms was incomparable to the appalling revelation I have yet to LEARN. It was right at that instance that I have realized that we as accidental creatures of this Earth has treated it with so much indifference that we are starting to sense our karmic retributions. Earth is dying and it is dying fast. To reckon would be an easy thing to say. But...