ONCE upon a time, there lived an English teacher called Sr. Rosario. She was, what we would call in our time, a terror teacher.
A student she was training to read for mass infamously fainted during practice. Sr. Rosario confessed to me with great hilarity two decades later that for a horrifying moment there, she thought she had killed her student. Turns out, the culprit was a combination of fear and hunger. The student survived.
You had to come prepared to Sr. Rosario’s class—not just to answer questions but to bring all sizes of perfectly-cut paper. Tearing paper was a barbaric act. We had to sit with our backs straight and our hands clasped in front on our desks. We had to keep still. We had to keep our mouths shut.
Extraneous words and actions were prohibited. The movement of any facial muscle required an explanation. When the occasion called for it—speaking, smiling and laughing had to be done with propriety. Loud was prohibited. This was reserved for Sr. Rosario.
Her class was not for the faint of heart. We had to be able to expound extemporaneously on any topic she deemed fit to give us and with our choice of words, enunciation and pronunciation under great scrutiny.
In the speech lab, we had to be able to expel air as evidenced by the movement of the paper placed inches away from our mouths when producing aspirated consonant sounds like p in pill, t in till and k in kill.
We had to write essays on the spot without mistake, erasure and extra space on the paper. All lines on each page had to be filled in from left to right, top to bottom. And in the pre-computer age, we had to type book reports with the same rules. As the end of the line or page loomed, we had to make the difficult decision which choice words to type in to fill in the space completely.
Her class was not for lesser mortals. Many girls were reduced to tears upon hearing the thunderous drone of her voice. Only those with thick skins survived. I was one of them.
Sr. Rosario taught me writing, editing and public speaking under great pressure. This augured well for me in my life. She never gave me a mark higher than 85 in my essays. This pushed me to try harder and to do better, all the time.
Sr. Rosario Justiniani F.I.
February 14, 1926 – June 24, 2019
She was a reader at mass all the way till she was 92 because she couldn’t stand the readers at mass.
Sr. Rosario taught me more than English. She taught me discipline, dedication, determination. She taught me not to seek excuses, not to slack, not to settle. She always taught with tough love. And I survived, thrived and lived happily ever after.
Once upon a time, there lived an English teacher called Sr. Rosario. But she was not just an ordinary teacher. She was a rock star. She was a legend.