Of all the seminars that I’ve attended, the seminar on problem-solving strategies is perhaps the most frightening—and challenging. Why? Well, for one, it was Dr. Bernardita Aberion, former Education Program head, who facilitated it, and everyone present at that time knows who Dr. Aberion is. She’s a no-holds-barred teacher. She speaks her mind. She’s frank, the kind that can make anyone recoil in embarrassment. She’s strict. Her very presence is enough to send chills to faint-hearted students.
Indeed, she’s the only speaker I’ve ever seen who began a seminar by scolding the participants. “I was told that you will prepare the materials,” she said, “only to find out that I will have to prepare them myself.”
When she started fuming, it seemed as though the cozy Audio-Visual Room suddenly turned warm. The din in the room disappeared, and was supplanted by an eerie silence.
“Nganong gamay lang man ang gipa-photocopy?” she continued. “Nagtipid mo? When you want to learn, you have to spend.”
Still, we managed to keep our heads above the water. Later on when the tension in the room died down—and all were no longer fidgeting in their seats—she gamely gave us an exercise that involved problem-solving. It was about “Discovering Properties of Counting Numbers.” She emphasized, however, that it’s not only in Mathematics where one can apply the problem-solving strategy. Dr. Aberion said it can also be used in such diverse subjects as English, Science, or Social Studies. To illustrate, she gave us another activity that still involved problem-solving. It was about “Desert Survival.”
The activity took a long time to finish. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. Had I not taken it, I wouldn’t have known that the most important thing to be had in order to survive when your plane crashed in the desert is a cosmetic mirror. I thought it was a liter of water.
“Of all the items,” Dr. Aberion explained, “the mirror is absolutely critical. It is the most powerful tool you have for communicating your presence. In sunlight, a simple mirror can generate five to seven million candle power of light. The reflected sunbeam can even be seen beyond the horizon. If you had no other items, you would still have an excellent chance of being spotted and picked up within the first twenty four hours.”
As we ended the seminar, Dr. Aberion apologized for fuming mad at us, and asked us if we enjoyed the seminar. Well, it need not be asked. Yes, we had a rocky start. But we ended it well. In fact, I’m proud that my co-interns and I had survived Dr. Aberion’s seminar. Through this seminar, I’ve proven to myself that that Dr. Aberion is not really the strait-laced disciplinarian and terror teacher that she’s rumored to be.
To me, she’s just a no non-sense teacher who wants every student to take learning seriously.
