During my seven-year high-school teaching stint, I threw myself into teaching, in my first year, as well as getting to know my former teachers-turned-colleagues, and the politics of an educational institution. I also conducted a preliminary survey of creative writing among high school students prior to introducing journal writing as a method of teaching creative writing, with the intent of conducting a survey after several years of practice.

In my second year, I was appointed the area coordinator of the English Communication Arts and spent part of my time managing the faculty, mentoring students and teachers, creating new student organizations, and overhauling the English Communication Arts curriculum. I was a weekday-single-mom with a live-in nanny-cum-housemaid courtesy of an absentee husband who “worked” for his parents in their province a 3-hour-drive away. In that year, I had also befriended a few new teachers with whom I shared many common sentiments, from politics to friendship to teaching styles.

My 3rd and 4th years of teaching saw me travelling more frequently around the country to facilitate workshops and seminars for other schools also run by the same religious order I grew up with. As my professional career was becoming more established, my marriage was floundering and towards the end of the 4th school year, it ended dramatically with a broken ankle and my mother rushing in to the rescue. I spent the last month of the school year and most of the summer in a full leg cast in my mother’s house, with the school sending paperwork to keep me busy. Summer was hectic with lawyer interviews as my mother facilitated the initiation of annulment proceedings. Later that year, Philippine courts adopted a new family law that recognized annulments through legal systems rather than merely through the church. This law gave my lawyer the opportunity to push my annulment through and after next 2 years, I could legally use my maiden name again. Even then, I had already reverted to it as soon as I returned to teaching after the cast came off.

While the annulment was in the works, I had met the man who would eventually become husband #2 several years later. In an effort to push me into another marriage because she thought I would be overcome by depression, my mother had contacted everyone she knew as my friends and solicited their help to take me out to socialize and meet someone new. Future husband #2 was introduced to me by a friend who had convinced me that we were a perfect match. But this isn’t about my marriages, it’s about my teaching career.

On my 6th year, the school was beset by a strike of teachers who were members of the employees association, which was pushing for a union. I stayed with the school because I did not believe in unions. Besides, the school was my alma mater and my loyalties were with the school. I stayed another year with the school, after the strike, then felt I could move on.

Before my 8th year of teaching began, I resigned to take a job as an indexer and abstracter, reading articles from newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and academic journals and creating index entries and abstracts. Within a year, I had been promoted to team leader, and after a couple more years, I was promoted to a division head with a director’s title. While the job was not a teaching job, I still ended up doing the occasional training seminar or workshop for new employees. The formation of a union and their displeasure at how I dealt openly and transparently with my division told me it was time to leave. I resigned and decided to devote my time to raising and home schooling my son.

During that time, I did a bit of research writing, writing for a publication distributed among students in public schools, and writing a set of pre-school workbooks for my son, but which would also have been published by a publishing group I was invited to join as part of the board. Unfortunately, only the first volume was published. Later in the year, I also accepted a temporary job managing an exhibit that consisted of 12 large exhibit rooms celebrating the Year of the Ocean. My directive was to interview, hire, train, and manage the staff. After nearly a year of freelancing, I was offered the position of Director of Publicity and Public Relations with the premier English repertory theatre company in the country, with a salary slightly higher than what I had left as Director/ division head. I accepted. I would be in theatre and writing! After a couple of seasons, I was invited to be Assistant Director to a major production.

I would have continued to work with the company had I not been offered a position as School Director for a progressive new school in the same mall within the year. It was exciting to be pirated by another company because they recognized by skills, knowledge, and the contributions I could bring to the company. Within a year, the school moved towards expansion and I was promoted to Director of Operations, then Director of Program Development. After a year with the company, I realized it would not get anywhere because of the overall handling by top management, so I resigned.

Shortly thereafter, I learned some of the directors were giving up their pay so teachers could get paid; eventually, there was not enough to pay teachers and the company downsized, disposed of property, furniture, and equipment. For a few months, I freelanced again from home, then a friend informed me that my former principal and high school teacher who had become Dean of Liberal Arts in the college department of my school was asking after me. Before I knew it, she had invited me to join the English faculty, so I went in for an interview and demonstration. I was assigned a part-time load and immersed myself in teaching once more, except that it was in college.

Around that time, my mother offered me a huge sum of money to apply for immigration to Canada, in the hope that it would transform Number 2 into a productive, useful contributor to society. She had it on a friend’s word that life in Canada had transformed her lazy, non-productive son into a hard worker to survive. Considering the deal, I decided it would be the best thing for me and my little boy. After 10 years, my marriage had deteriorated into a sham. With each year that passed waiting for an interview and approval, my resolve to leave Number 2 behind strengthened.

Two years later, I was invited to interview and give a demo at another college across the street and accepted a part-time position as well. On my fourth year into college teaching, I was offered a full-time position in the second college, so I completed my semester with the first college and moved to the second college, where I also accepted a position as a department chairperson. Shortly thereafter, I was recommended to take over the position of Executive Director for a dance scholarship program. In my year and a half as E.D., I managed the dancers and produced six major original performances, choreographing segments for two shows and designing costumes, stage, and lights for some others. I often brought along my son to classes, where he impressed everyone with his knowledge, speaking, and confidence. Little did I know that whenever he was left home with his father, the foundations of a psychological barrier were being established.

On my 7th teaching year in college, in September, papa died. We were in the middle of preparations for a new show and it was just after lunch when I received the call from my older sister-in-law. I took a short break to attend the wake and funeral, then had to return to work to mount the show.

Towards the end of October, I received an unexpected phone call from the Canadian Embassy inviting us to an interview the next month, during which our permanent resident visas to Canada were given to us. We were informed we had exactly a year from that date to migrate to Canada or the visas would expire and we would have to re-apply. Although I already knew my stay in the college would end at the end of my 3rd year as a full-time faculty member, receiving the end-of-contract notice from a dean who had opposed my appointment to department head then Executive Director (reporting only and directly to the President and Vice-President) was bittersweet.

I was beset with the stress of packing, disposing of a house and its contents, and other details of immigration plus preparations for a dance performance tour of a new show, and dealing with college politics were too much for me and I spent my last month of teaching in hospital for over a week. I missed the trip and returned to school in time to clear my office and file my final reports. Then the stress of packing and booking tickets before disposable funds started eating into immigration funds were not helped by the fact that number 2 was of no help at all. Still, I managed to get everything together, booking a flight and ending up with overweight luggage because of last minute packing that did not making the shipment we were sending by boat to follow us after we had found a place to live.

Thus ended stage 2–the next 8 years of my teaching career, with a 7-year hiatus from full classroom teaching in between, broken only by one year with the progressive mall-school that never made it.