Teachers Day passed by almost unnoticed

Teachers Day last Monday came and passed by quietly with little notice from the general public. Except for some isolated events in some schools there were practically no major happenings to mark the day. In fact, I did not know about it until one of my colleagues in Cagayan de Oro city texted me a greeting.

On that day one is supposed to remember with fondness and gratitude those people in whose classrooms he learned about life and how to live it. They were simple folks, those teachers we had, but well learned and highly dedicated in their work. Schooled in the ideals of western humanism, they went about their day-to-day work with one clear purpose: To turn their blundering, unlettered wards into real men and women.

Hard work and idealism - is this still true of the government teachers these days? The answer could be yes and no. But whatever the appraisal is, teachers are still teachers. They may have shortcomings but their strong points almost always outweigh these. For who among us cannot say that what we have been is in some ways the handiwork of our teachers?

This writer is a product of the public school system, and his experience in the grades points to the major role of his teachers in his formation as a person and as a learner. I’m referring to those classroom heroes of San Nicolas elementary school in this city who were managing the learning process therein in the early years after the Second World War.

One of these teachers was the late Miss Catalina Alesna who handled our English class in grade six, section one. From her we learned the basic elements of the language - spelling, vocabulary, correct usage, and others, drilling us everyday on these until most of us became proficient in the use of this tool subject. For her our exposure to the language should be thorough, so she required us to attend an extra period in the afternoon every class day, a painful thing really for us kids because this took us away from our play session with other kids. Years later, when most of us became professionals, we realized how fortunate we were to be under such a dedicated teacher as Miss Alesna.

Does the system still has teachers like Miss Alesna? My 30 years with DepEd (it used to be MEC, MECS, and DECS) tells me it has. But their number is diminishing. There are a number of possible factors that have brought down the quality of work ethics of teachers. One could be the low regard people have towards teaching as a profession. Although considered a professional (it took a legislation to do this), still a teacher is looked upon as lower in category compared to an engineer, an accountant, an entrepreneur, or even a nurse. Remuneration could be partly responsible for this for teaching carries with it only a modest salary scale.

But most probably the amount of brain work needed to become a teacher, coupled with the comparative ease in passing the licensure examination, is also a factor toward this trend. So a parent was overheard telling a daughter: “Dili man nimo kaya ang accountancy, kuha lang og education.”

Lowly regarded, is it any wonder that many teachers have a low self-concept? And since one’s valuation of himself influences his behavior, is it surprising if a good number of mentors have exhibited a less than satisfactory performance?

One of the problems school officials are perennially confronted with is how to motivate their teachers to work conscientiously to make their children learn. In many assessments, both local and global, it has been found that Filipino school children are two to three grades lower in academic achievements. This less than desirable performance among basic level school children has also been brought to light in DepEd’s recent evaluation, which is not surprising because this has been the trend for years despite expensive interventions.

Confronted with this, educators are quick to point out the many unresponded needs of the system – classrooms, adequate instructional materials, normal teacher-pupils ratio, enough health facilities. Yet they hesitate to say that it’s the quality of teachers which is really the root cause. A good teacher can make her children learn - even if she holds classes in dilapidated rooms and even if she is not fully equipped with learning tools.

After the war, when we had to carry our chairs to and from our school, when books were a rarity and laboratory equipment nonexistent, we managed to learn and learn much compared to today’s learners. Why? Because we had hard working and dedicated teachers like Miss Catalina Alesna. God bless her soul!

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