e sure to close the door properly,” Maestra Moning would remind me each afternoon after all my class- mates had left. “And check the windows, too.” Maestra Moning was my Grade 1 teacher. It was my job to lock the door of our classroom and pull down the awning-type windows of capiz shells. I climbed a chair to reach the latches and engage them. Mondays, three or four of us would go home much later than the rest; it was our assigned day for cleaning. We swept and scrubbed and made sure that our homeroom, originally painted white but which had turned gray over time, was spick and span for the next day’s class. Each one of us in the class had a scheduled day for cleaning. But being the homeroom caretaker, I would go home late together with the other cleaners, even if it was not my cleaning day. As early as the first grade, I was taught by my teacher the value of safety and the virtue of responsibility.
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