Impulses

By Herman M. Lagon I was not planning to watch it. A random scroll on Facebook showed a teacher with uncontrollable tics helping a pupil who was quietly battling a terminal illness. My daughter saw me wiping my eyes and teased why, as a movie buff, I had missed it. Out of curiosity, I clicked …

By Herman M. Lagon As part of my GCED Online Course with Unesco-APCEIU, under the guidance of Dr. Jeff Plantilla, I have been wrestling with a simple but heavy question: What do international human rights standards really mean for ordinary lives? The six-week online course is not about quoting dignitaries or keeping track of dates. …

By Herman M. Lagon While watching rainwater spread across our school grounds, a teacher quietly said, “They should fix the floods first instead of spending money on impeachment.” It was a sentiment many could relate to. Years of flooding can wear down anyone’s patience. Yet that simple remark also revealed a deeper problem: The growing …

By Herman M. Lagon There is a moment in every workplace when people quietly decide whether to follow you or just comply with you. You rarely see it in formal meetings or written directives. It lives in the small moments — when pressure builds and you stay, or when it eases and you disappear; when …

By Herman M. Lagon Smart-shaming has a way of slipping into places it should never be — in the corners of classrooms, in between jokes on a group chat, even inside faculty rooms. Over time, it has quietly turned spaces meant for learning into places of quiet humiliation. A student shares a thoughtful answer and …

By Herman M. Lagon There is a kind of teacher you will not notice right away. No dramatic speeches in faculty meetings. No constant posting of accomplishments online. No habit of reminding everyone how busy they are. Yet when they are absent, something quietly collapses. Deadlines wobble. Coordination weakens. Someone eventually says, half-joking but not …

By Herman M. Lagon The most “intelligent” teacher I met in my early years of teaching could solve almost anything you threw at him — statistics, curriculum design, even budget headaches no one else wanted to touch. Students admired him. We relied on him. If there was a problem, people would say, “Ask Sir, he’ll …

By Herman M. Lagon One rarely goes through a day without encountering plastic. From food packaging to throw-away coffee cups, plastic permeates everything, and the issue goes beyond what first greets us. Now, everywhere — in our oceans, soil, air, even within our bodies — microplastics, small bits less than five millimeters, abound. For us …

By Herman M. Lagon Some phrases are not just spoken — they are lived. Like faded uniforms or borrowed slippers, idioms quietly cling to our days. In our classrooms, barangay halls and Facebook threads, these phrases tumble out of our mouths as naturally as sighs. Yet behind their humor or charm often lies more honesty …

By Herman M. Lagon A mid-career teacher arrives at a graduate class already tired. When it begins with a long lecture and a recall-based exam, people listen and nod — but the energy never really arrives. The same teacher, a week later, joins a different class where the session begins with a case pulled from …