Everyone knows how difficult it can be to tell twins apart, especially identical twins – but this is a challenge one teacher in Pangasinan, Philippines, has to face each day because she has a total of seven sets of twins in her class!
What’s even more challenging is that this is teacher Fershalen Belen’s first time to handle a class as a full-time teacher in Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades but she’s risen up to the challenge.
With 60 students in her Grade 7 class, Teacher Belen certainly has a lot to deal with and couldn’t yet memorize all the names of her students.
Photo credit: Elaine Fulgencio, ABS-CBN News
Telling the twins’ apart has also become a tedious task for the teacher but she had a solution to her dilemma: let the twins sit in separate parts of the classroom so she could tell who’s who.
Of course, that wouldn’t prevent them for exchanging seats and confusing their teacher once in a while but the teacher trusts that these twins won’t think of such mischief.
As is common with twins, the ones in Teacher Belen’s class also had very similar names: John and Jay, Caroline and Kimberly, Aldrin and Alvin, Christer and Christian, James Christian and James Christopher, Jan Kean and Jan Rian, and Lyrian and Lyrica.
Teacher Belen admitted that she was very much confused on the first day of school and still interchanges the names up to this day but she’s slowly learning to tell the little differences and believes she can tell them apart easily, even without name tags, really soon.
Of course, the school could have put these twins in separate classrooms but according to Teacher Belen, most prefer to be together; thus, the teachers decided to let them stay in one class.
How to Tell Twins Apart?
It’s really difficult to tell twins apart but family and close friends will tell you that even identical twins are different; although you really have to know them to tell them apart.
In terms of looks, there are times when the twins have different identifying marks; although others make it easier for people to tell them apart by getting different hairstyles or other identifiers such as specific accessories.