Kate Aguinaldo Stem 11-2

1. What came into your mind the moment you read the title of the story? Describe in detail your initial reaction,
your expectation and assumption about the story based on the title alone.

- As someone who first encountered this story, my first impression of the title was that it was a
fiction story composed of supernatural and incredible events. At first, I assumed the story was
about gods with supernatural abilities and magic that literally visited a certain place. I thought
that there would be things like protagonists (good gods) and antagonists (evil gods) in the
content of the story. I actually imagine that there will be some conflict between good gods and
evil gods where the evil gods will emerge from nowhere and try to ruin the visitation and
conquer that place, while the good gods will try to defend that certain place and vanquish the
evils. Aside from those conflicts, I also anticipated that some of the protagonists would develop
feelings for each other and marry in the final part of the story. Finally, as in other stories where
there was good and evil, I imagined that the good side would face some difficulties and be on
the verge of surrendering in the midst of their battles with the evil, but in the end, I presumed
that there would be a plot twist where the good gods would gain strength and a fighting spirit
that would aid them in defeating evil.

2. What is the actual problem that Ms. Noel encountered in the school where she was employed? Who are the gods
and why were they called such?

- In my own understanding of the story, the actual problem that Ms. Noel encountered in the
school where she was employed was the Filipino mentality that was running in their system.
This problem includes discrimination, invalidating the process of evaluation, and denying you
the right to apply your own principles and opinions. First is discrimination against "unliked"
teachers and students. This happens when the most difficult and problematic tasks or activities
in the school are purposefully assigned to them so that if they refuse, they will be punished for
insubordination. The second is invalidating the process of evaluation. This happens when the
school prepares and hides their imperfections in front of the visitors, as if the school had lived
with perfection. The whole process becomes scripted and it invalidates the essence of
evaluation. The last problem is that it denies you the right to apply your own principles and
opinions. This means that, no matter how good a teacher you are, you must teach what the
higher authorities have given you. There is nothing you can do but disregard your own principles
and opinions just to impress them and follow what they have said. 
- The gods that the title was referring to are the superintendent, district supervisor, and the
division supervisors that are going to inspect and evaluate Pugad Lawin. In my understanding of
the story, they are called gods because of the way the school prepares everything for them and
makes everything perfect before they arrive, which somehow can be related to how the
servants in a castle prepare everything and make everything perfect before the arrival of their
God and Goddess. The pompous preparation and serving of delicious foods by teachers and
students can be compared to the preparation and serving of foods by God and Goddess'
servants. Besides that, the way the school's faculty and students treated them with flattery and
gift-giving can be compared to how gods are treated.

3. Is there a truth to the issues mentioned in the story? Provide personal or heard-of narrative related to what you
read. Do the events mentioned in the story actually happen today?

- Yes, in my experience and observation, there is truth to the issue mentioned in the story, and I
could also say that the major events depicted in the story actually happen today. How could I say
that? Well, my mother is a teacher, and I experienced being a student in a public school when I
was in elementary. So, during these times, my mother and I have experienced all those
issues mentioned in the story. First is the discrimination against teachers. When I was in 3rd
grade, my mother was in the lowest rank (teacher 1). She was being abused by their headteacher
in a way that she always assigned her to a lot of tasks. The worst part here is that many other
teachers can also perform all those duties, but their headteacher always chooses to assign my
mother to all those tasks that she wanted her to do. I felt sad and pity at the same time because my
mother had to do all those tasks without the right to complain about anything. She spent more
time doing all those assigned tasks than teaching her students. She also spent a lot of money
Kate Aguinaldo Stem 11-2

traveling to different places just to pick up what their headteacher wanted her to get in those
places. Discrimination is obvious here, because why would their headteacher always assign all
the tasks to my mother when she knows that she could also assign all of these tasks to her other
co-teacher? So, here you could relate to the part of the story where, “unliked” teachers were being
discriminated against in the way that they assigned them difficult tasks. The second is
invalidating the process of evaluation. When I was in elementary school, our teachers always told
us to keep quiet when the supervisor of our district came to visit our class. I also remember how
they prepared our school for the visitation of the supervisor by scheduling the cleaning of the
whole school. Aside from that, the teachers also used to give those honored students a question,
including its answer, that they had to recite when the teacher asked that question in our class
during observation of the supervisor. So here you can compare the part of the story where the
teachers try to hide all the imperfections in the school in such a way that everything is scripted.
The last one is denying someone the right to apply their own principles and opinions. As I
previously stated, my mother had the lowest rank (teacher 1) in their school when I was in
elementary, and her headteacher used to abuse and discriminate against her, so the same thing
happened here when my mom tried to practice her own way of teaching with her students and
their headteacher happened to pass by her room. While teaching, the headteacher interrupted and
told my mother that what she was doing was wrong, and then she told her some insulting things
that made my mother cry in front of her students. It was like a combination of being
discriminated against, humiliated, and deprived of the opportunity to apply her own principles
and opinions.

4. Being a student, what is your reaction to the issues related in the story and how do you think such problems
should be addressed?

- Being a student, I think we shouldn’t normalize these kinds of issues that are constantly
occurring in the system of our schools. It is something that we should put an end to. Honestly
speaking, these kinds of issues don’t actually help our schools to grow. Other teachers and
faculty members may believe it is for the best, but when we examine what we are doing, we see
that these so-called strategies that were made to impress the higher-ranking officials are not
helping the school to grow. In terms of evaluations and inspections, we should not have hidden
the imperfections in our schools or classes. Hiding these imperfections will only make our school
look perfect for a limited time frame. Yes, we wanted to impress the visitors, but impressing
these visitors with a completely farcical and scripted visit was completely useless. The reason for
evaluating is to help our school improve and be the best version of itself. It is something that will
help our school come up with a solution on how to improve its imperfections. I believe that
inspection and evaluation in school would be useless if we continued to do these hiding
practices. What is the point of evaluation and inspection if we are just going to hide all those
imperfections? Yes, we could say that we would get higher ratings in our school, but this is only
for those visitors that we have prepared for, not for those unexpected visitors. Allowing these
kinds of practices in our school system is not only bad for our own schools, but also for all of the
individuals who are studying and teaching in our schools. Next is in terms of the issue of
discrimination, favoritism, and denying one’s principles and opinions in schools. It is obvious
here that these issues will never benefit our schools when they continue to happen. The
situation will only get worse if we keep performing these practices. Open your mind and be
realistic; this is a type of toxicity that is poisoning our school's system, and we should take action
to end it because, to be honest, continuing to do so will only create inequity for all faculty
members and students in our schools.

- In my opinion, these problems are not that hard to address if every individual in our schools had a
good mindset, good enough to think about what was the right thing to do on these kinds of issues.
We are the ones that are creating these issues, so I think the first step in addressing this kind of
issue is to improve ourselves first. We should improve our mindset and exclude all those toxic
characteristics we have. We are the issue. We cannot affect change or address these issues if we
are the cause of the problems. We should all be responsible for our actions and try to be a better
person with a positive mindset or point of view on everything before we think about addressing
these kinds of issues. Second, we should enact laws and strategies in our schools that will
promote fairness and allow everyone to voice their opinions about education and our schools,
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which we can use as a foundation for improving our school system. Last is that we should do our
best to find a solution to the imperfections of our school. We should not hide them; we should
solve them. Hiding will never help any problem to be solved. The best way to address this issue is
to critically think about how to improve the school's imperfections, even if there was no expected
evaluation or inspection of supervisors.

5. If you were Miss Noel and you witnessed and experienced such in the school where you teach, what would have
been your course of action?

- If I were Miss Noel, I would choose to be real rather than fake everything just to impress
people. I would not hide any imperfections of mine or my class. I know that there might be
hurtful comments about me, but I believe that it is something that I needed to be aware of my
imperfections and to find a way to improve myself. Second, I would fight for my own principles,
rights, and opinions. It does not mean that I would disrespect the higher officials' opinions and
judgements. I would still follow their advice, but I would also stick to my own principles, rights,
and opinions. As long as I have a point and I know that I am right, I would rather get fired in my
profession for doing the right thing than continue doing things that were adding to the toxicity in
the system of the school.