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Be a Teacher!

Happy Teacher's Day to all! We are all teachers in one way or another.

Anyway I am reminded of these lines in Robert Bolt's "A Man for all Seasons"

Sir Thomas More- Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich - If I was, who would know it?
Sir Thomas More -You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that. And oh yes. The quiet life.

"A Man for all Seasons" is one of my favourite plays and movies. But what does it really mean to teach?

The cliche is that teaching is a noble profession. Perhaps. But like all cliches, many don't really have an inkling what that really means.

Bolt's More is right mostly but the quiet life bit.

Teachers do not have a quiet life. They are there to disturb, to shake or rock, to shatter and even to destroy if need be.

Teachers do build. They build futures. But in order to do that they have to shatter complacency, stereotypes, apathy and destroy ignorance. In doing so they face a lot of contradictions and frustrations. In the end one student at a time, they liberate.

So I'd like to thank these teachers who made me what I am now....a teacher.

Ms Ignacio, Mrs Tintero, Mrs Esguerra- who taught me literature
Mrs Libunao, Ms Quirante, Mr Espiritu -who taught me social studies and to see society as what it really is
Mrs Parina - who taught me art and that no work of art is ugly because the artist as a human being isn't ugly
Ms Tan - who taught what music really was

and of course the science teachers, Mrs Eustaquio, Mrs Mapa, Mr Tubal, Mrs Rabago

They taught me imagination before science. Didn't Einstein say that imagination is the source of science?

The math teachers, Mrs Canonizado, Mrs Matutina and Ms Villalobos. They all taught me that there isn't really a mathematically challenged student!

The Prac Arts teachers, Mr Talosig, Mr Manuel, Mrs Flor who taught us to make baskets, cook, grow veggies etc .These are important skills then as is now.

The Filipino teachers, Mrs Resuma, Mrs Gonzales,Mrs Antonio,Mrs Policarpio- who made Rizal and Balagtas understandable

and the PE teachers like Mr Arandez, who taught that winning isn't everything. (All the sports team I have been part of except one were cellar dwellers!)

Some of these teachers have passed away. I will remember them in my prayers. I hope they tell the Big Guy upstairs that I would be a good teacher too.

And teachers don't really go for honours. Metrobank may give them awards and recognition after a long career but what they really want is that their ex students fondly remember them. Perhaps that is More's "A quiet life".

Not a bad public, don't you agree?

Comments

sunnyday said…
Hi Blackshama,

I knew it. Your photo at FV started looking familiar and once I read the teachers' names on this blog post, I knew I had seen you before.

I belonged to Batch '86, and I was in UPIS for 10 years.

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