“My peers had the confidence to vote for me. I’m very thankful for that and humbled at the same time,” he said.
He first started as a teacher aide in special education classes.
“I was a special education teacher aide for a year. My experience with special education helped me in the regular classroom because in special education you need more patience. You are working one to one so I only had one student, a very personal approach. And it helped me here because in the regular classroom you have students from special education that they also put in your class,” he said.
Buniag also volunteers, leads, and facilitates school professional development and learning communities.
He believes that classroom management is the key to an effective learning environment.
“Classroom management is important. It is the root of everything as a teacher. Without that your kids are not going to learn anything. It is going be too noisy even though you want to present your lesson,” he said.
He has been a second grade teacher for four years now.
On the first day of school, he read his students a story.
“I read them ‘A Student Who Spends A Lifetime in Second Grade.’ And this makes the students learn the value of education and they set goals for themselves. People have different reasons why they want to go to school or they want to succeed. I ask the kids that. Some of them say, they want to have nice stuff when I grow up, or I want to help my parents. And whatever their goals are in the future, they got to start here in second grade,” he said.
Incorporating multiple intelligences learning is what he does in every lesson.
He makes the learning process as fun as much as he can “since they are in a grade level where they are supposed to be learning to read, so I emphasize more on learning how to read as well as do math. If I have to go a little over the time for the period, I do so. Besides academics, the number one thing that I also put in is more of values. Without that, you can be a smart student but if your attitude is awful, you’re not qualified to me as a good student. It is a combination of both.”
A reward system he uses for positive reinforcement makes his students persevere more and do their best in class.
“I have a reward system called the ‘oops’ and ‘wow’ slips. If they do something good in class, they get a wow slip. If they do something bad, they get the oops slip. If at the end of the week they have three wow slips, they get a certificate. If they have an oops slip, they’ll get a letter from me to their parents. And at the end of the quarter whoever has the most wow slips will get a prize from me.”
He said he also learns from his students.
He plans activities for each day carefully so the students will look forward to going to school.
“As long as you have your routines and structure, you don’t keep the kids guessing on the next activity to work on,” he said.
Buniag is grateful for the parents who are happy to know that their children are in his class.
“I don’t want to break that trust that they gave to me. I don’t want to disappoint them. That’s what motivates me to be a better teacher everyday,” he said.
