“If you ask me to live there for five years of my life, I will die. I will go insane.”
No, Dr. Alfonso Augusto Hiquiaña was not referring to the malaria-risk regions of Central Africa or the windswept hinterlands of the Himalayas. He was referring to the rather picturesque grounds of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the state of Illinois, USA.
Doc Al, as the School of Communication (SCM) faculty member is fondly called, was about to begin his doctoral degree while waiting for his green card. He described the setting: “I was there winter of 1995, and classes were about to start. The campus is really beautiful. High-tech. But it was wintertime. It was overcast. It was gloomy; there were very few people around. I said, ‘I am going to go crazy here.’“
The city boy in him prevailed, and he returned to the noise of Manila sans his green card. He acquired his PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, where he also took his undergraduate degree and master’s degree. He applied afterwards for a teaching post in UA&P and never left since.
Thank you, Illinois. We have one dedicated Dragon.
Excellent high school teachers
Doc Al spent his teenage years feasting on the sounds and sights of New York City. His mother, who was training there in psychiatry, wanted to keep her sanity, so she got the two younger boys in the brood of five to stay with her.
“When I was there as an adolescent, New York was the most exciting and most dangerous place on earth,” he recalled.
Thus, the laidback agricultural backdrop of Urbana did not appeal to the grown-up lover of the English language. But up to now, he is thankful for his time in the US.
“I think my high school [experience] determined what I am now because of my exposure to my high school teachers, who were excellent. I saw what a good teacher ought to be…. They were truly passionate about their jobs….”
“You never have the feeling that the teachers are just there to teach. You see that these are teachers who are practically laying before our eyes what life could be. Many of them, especially my science teacher, was able to inspire his ‘disciples’ to actually become scientists themselves.”
This passion in the teaching profession rubbed off on him, apparently.
“He makes sure he starts the day right by preparing his gadgets, his laptop, his bags,” said Ms. Jam Mancenido of the Center for Social Responsibility in her video testimonial for Doc Al. “He would have his own speakers. For a teacher to have all that prepared for his class, it says a lot about how much his class means to him,” she concluded.
A middle school teacher forever
After college, Doc Al taught at PAREF Southridge for two years.
“I found out after my first year of teaching in Southridge that I really wanted to be a teacher. I thought I was going to be a teacher in the middle school forever.”
He was about to go for another year when he was offered to teach English in Taiwan. He stayed in Taiwan for six and a half years teaching English as a second language. He had a grand time.
“That was when I realized that I love to teach English more than anything else. I was teaching it to professionals. I was teaching it to college students. I said, ‘This is really fun.’”
This prompted him to take further studies. For his doctorate, he eyed five universities in the US. Only one denied him.
“They only welcome superstars like Dr. Celing Tiongco*,” Doc Al laughed, his eyes only slits. Deciding to take his PhD in UP instead, he applied for a teaching post at the College of Arts and Sciences of UA&P.
Sometime in 2000, he joined SCM.
“I started teaching business presentations around 2005. That is what I am still doing up to today. But the one who really revamped the presentation course of UA&P is Jason de Villa. He is the man. He introduced the new approach. I started teaching it to Batch 2009. It has proven to be very effective. There are many things that need to be adjusted but the course has made the UA&P graduates, I think, better presentors.”
That kind of teacher
It has always been the students that keep Doc Al going. He believes in their capacity to make a big difference.
“If you produce 400 graduates a year…400 people who are so in love with life, with work, and they, in their own little ways, want to change the world…how would they affect Philippine society? This is for me a burning concern every day: how people can change.”
He acknowledged the evolving role of teachers and the challenges that this reality poses.
“The students that we have right now are different [from past ones]. They come from a different world. We are now competing with so many ideas out there. So if we tell them that there is such a thing called the good life, the students would say, ‘Show it to me. What is this good life that you are talking about? How is it going to make my world better?’
So, for UA&P, this is the challenge. If we think that there is such a thing called good life, then we have to be able to articulate it to today’s millennials. How do we do that? Every time you go to the classroom, it is like [asking yourself] ‘How can we now reach out to these kids?’ I say this because my [high school] teachers made such an impact on me that until today the memories are still so fresh. I mean, wow, my teachers were so immense in their influence. Are we that kind of a teacher right now?”
Doc Al is optimistic that the University can do much good in this scenario.
“If we are able to teach [the students] well, hopefully they get to see more about what life has to offer to them, then maybe we could truly create a better world through them.”
*Dr. Celerino Tiongco is the dean of the UA&P School of Education and Human Development. He graduated from Columbia University with a doctoral degree in education (higher and postsecondary education).
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