Teachers do make dreams come true

While growing up in our upland community some decades back, I could count by my fingers the few professionals left in our community. Most of them were teachers. I seldom saw other professionals who were most likely lured to the big city or found work abroad.

The teachers left an indelible mark on us. I and the other children had a direct encounter with them because they stayed to teach in our elementary school. School time, of course, was a welcome break from the normal rhythm of countryside life: raising cattle and goats, plowing the fields, and laboring to exhaustion. While these teachers celebrated and extolled the hard work of ordinary folks, we had a break from backbreaking work whenever we were in school.

We learned from our teacher back then the many uses of slender bamboo sticks. They could be used as pointers on the board. But once in a while they could also be used to whack the bottoms of some naughty students.

Our teachers were quite ingenious. With the scarcity of teaching materials, old calendars were reused as charts and reading materials. Improvised reading stands were fashioned from the branches and twigs of the nearby trees. These simple tools of providing learning opened the gateways to knowledge and began to stir us into embracing newfound ambition.

I always looked upon our teachers as heroes in our community. Their voices and influence awakened my dreams of one day breaking myself free from the farmland. They created the ditches where these dreams were slowly watered, nurtured and ultimately flourished.

Teachers do make our dreams come true. It’s no wonder then, that I too, became a teacher. Many others in our community became teachers too. And many others became professionals that our small upland community has become a community of professionals.

So, whenever you meet a teacher today and every day, always whisper a prayer for them. Without them, what would our future be?

Happy World Teachers’ Day to my colleagues.