DFA telephone lines went dead yesterday, the day after Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto G. Romulo indicated support for Noynoy. DFA spokesman Ed Malaya would neither confirm nor deny that Malacañang was behind the sabotage.

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Teacher found her two students at each other, “Why are you fighting?”
Student 1: “Because, Ma’am, binato niya ako ng erase-the-board.”
Student 2: “Kasi, Ma’am, hinampas niya ako ng sweep-the-floor.”
Teacher: “Tama na kayo, o isasabit ko kayo sa land-of-the-morning!”

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We learn English from our teachers... or from the movies. But in the end, RP still hosts a good number of call centers.

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Oscar R. Sañez says the NCR has 25 percent of the country’s graduating population and 80 percent of IT-BPO jobs... while the Visayas has 21 percent of national graduates but only 10 percent of IT-BPO jobs.

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Iloilo Mayor Jerry Treñas wants a larger slice of Manila’s call centers... as soon as Visayans can distinguish between, and not interchange, their “i’s” and “e’s.”

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In Berlin, Consul General Joselito Jimeno, Consul Manny Comia, and I used to chuckle over the pseudo-American slang of one ASEAN ambassador whom we couldn’t understand... only to learn that he had a Filipino-English teacher.

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It’s an uphill climb to bring back English as taught by the Thomasites and the Jesuit and St. Louis fathers. But Metrobank Foundation Inc., De La Salle, Philippine Business for Education, and Campaigns Social Response join hands with DepEd and key business institutions to push a Teachers’ Month Campaign (TMC) from Sept.4-Oct. 5 to raise the teaching profession and to recognize mentors.

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October 5 is designated ‘‘World Teachers’ Day” to honor teachers and their central role in guiding children, youths and adults through the life-long learning process.

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Ambassador Preciosa Soliven inscribed RP as UNESCO Regional Center for Asia in Life-Long Learning.

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Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas, an educator, announced that General Appropriations Act earmarked P3.9 billion as tuition aid for 700,000 private high school students.

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Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said GA set aside another P1 billion to retool 276,534 teachers in English, Math and Science.

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Sr. Mayolo Torres returned from Madrid in 1960 to teach Spanish to the best freshman class in the Philippines. However none of his students have yet won the Premio Zobel.

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I was intimidated by math and got conditional ‘4s’ in three semesters (algebra, trigonometry, and statistics).

But I learned in one evening session with an English teacher Gene Lachica everything that I could not in one semester under a genius professor... and breezed through each revalidating exam.
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Teaching is a gift... to be able to unlock the doors to knowledge and to open the world to the young.

Feedback: jaz@mb.com.ph