Of the essays being written for this series in a forthcoming issue of the Golden Pine Tree, our class has opted to make up our contribution by describing some of our City High experiences, particularly with specific teachers: in colors. These are our expressions of appreciation.
RED. Ms Maria Montenegro (now Ramirez) is definitely a red: warm, glowing, and stands out in any crowd. Her teaching us Spanish opened to us a language which was strangely familiar and yet not so familiar: conjugating verbs was the painful part, translating phrases was the pleasure, and has further advanced our interest and focus on a culture that we needed to comprehend. Red is the color of toreadors' capes, tomato sauce which is a staple of Spanish cuisine, and, together with yellow, the colors of the Spanish flag.
GREEN. For many of us, connecting green with environmental issues was still latent during our high school days. But certainly the enjoyment of being among thickets of green pine trees, perhaps between the City Auditorium and the high school building, sitting on the spongy needles while doing our reading or crocheting or eating our merienda, was a pleasure which alas has changed: these trees have fast been depleted in the city. We belonged specifically to an age where Baguio as a green belt was a strong given: that no amount of population expansion or "progress" could alter. Our beloved Biology teacher, Mrs. Felisa Beltran, is definitely a green proponent and would make an excellent adviser to the local government on green issues if she is still with us! The sessions of countless practice drawings of hibiscus blossoms were both lessons in art (perspective) and flora structure. The word "Environmentalist" was not yet coined at that time, but she certainly is one.
YELLOW. The late Miss Soledad Blancas was a yellow, for certain: she always had a sunny disposition, made Physical Education and with its attendant activities such as folk dancing, seem fun, fun, fun while learning steps; how to shoulder arms and how to march at the parades we needed to participate in.
BLUE. The demands of studying physics, something we dreaded as we went on from 3rd to 4th year, merits a blue. We all had serious limitations and shortcomings in our physics classes: it was laborious and a hard uphill climb. But we got through, nevertheless, with Mrs. Felisa Penera as our physics teacher, and guided us in the rigors of understanding torques, forces, stress, fulcrum, momentum, and other terms which are now everyday language in our work and play. Still, it was a "hard", as opposed to "soft" subject to tackle, but we had the foresight to get through it one way or the other.
BROWN. History as taught by Mr. Heriberto Mori: the images were in sepia, basic facts like the founding of the United Nations, the North-South conflict of the war over slavery, dates of the Korean War, the Katipunan factions, President Quezon and his passionate stand on independence. Although most of the learning was necessarily by rote, Mr. Mori made history more alive by injecting many of the facts with his own experiences, being a pensionado in the United States for his higher education.
Our class has nearly two hundred members. We will be celebrating our 50th alumni homecoming in 2011. It is perhaps an understatement to say that City High's influence is such that it has helped in conditioning our life activities and opportunities, that we owe so much to our teachers, over these fifty years. We are grateful: for the vivid colors, for the heart-warming memories, and City High's collective mantra of "you can do better", and providing us with rudders as we go on, through 50 years and more, of our existence.
(Note: the limitations of space has prevented us to include more teachers that we would have liked! However, we shall soon be running our own series as well of various stories and anecdotes. We have done one on Miss Valdez and another on Mr Calica. Please visit our blog:
http://bchs61tambayan.blogspot.com/
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