Filipino Author Shares His Enthusiasm with Students
For the last three decades, the Sweetwater Union High School District has been at the forefront of providing Filipino language classes to students. Whether students want to learn a foreign language or increase their fluency in the language of their parents, the Sweetwater District has expanded the number of class sections offered.
If the Sweetwater District is the Mecca of Filipino teaching, then Bonita Vista High School teacher Ed Lim is one of its masters. Lim has written a Filipino-English dictionary that has taken a completely different approach to the language.
Ed Lim is on a mission to create new Filipino literature. His Filipino-English dictionary is the first book he's published, but he hopes more are on the way. The new books will be authored by his students.
For beginners, Lim's dictionary contains words with all 28 letters of the current Filipino language, whereas the traditional dictionary covers only 20 letters. Lim has also researched the 100 different languages and the people of the Philippines and included that in an almanac-style portion of the dictionary.
"I had always wanted to be a writer," Lim said. "I never thought I would write a dictionary, but I love my profession, and this is my community service to the profession."
It took three years and 500 hours to complete the dictionary, Lim said. He has self-published the dictionary, a publishing method that he highly recommends for any aspiring author.
Lim has been so inspired about the publishing process that now he wants to inspire his students to be authors. This semester, all students in his Filipino class will write a poem, autobiography, narrative and an expository text. He will select one from each student and include it an anthology in Filipino. They will edit each other's work.
"It will be a powerful project," Lim said. "It will be our offering to Filipino literature. I want my students to understand that we should all be teachers and scholars to contribute to our world."