Wealth of Teaching

I’ve been working as a teacher for a year and four months now. Yet my understanding of being a teacher is still evolving day by day. I realized that how I understood this profession was not yet substantial until I was immersed in the actual teaching scenario. I realize that the books, lectures, and inputs given by my college professors, when I was just an education student, are just spectacles of what is in store for me. When I ask my students what course they are planning to take up, they tend to mention almost all the other courses other than education primarily because they believe that they won’t gain much from this course in the future. Right now, the standards of the world are geared towards determining the gains. People nowadays choose a career that will give them greater return of investments with minimal sacrifice due, perhaps to the fast paced and technological world that we have, when everything we need and want can be acquired in an instant. There is some truth to that. If I am only after the monetary gains of this profession, I might have surrendered last year and should have furnished my resignation papers. To be honest, my salary seems to be just sufficient for my daily needs. I must say, this profession is not a dream job for someone who wishes to have a great bank account. What fuels me then is the realization that I’m gaining a lot beyond the standards of the world. When I was a high school student, I really dreamt to be a teacher because of the great inspiration that my teachers gave me. I promised that one time I will be like them. Now that I am already teaching, I am amazed that my inspirations for this vocation are still out there doing the thing that they fell in love with– teaching. Some of them are even ageing already in this profession yet still pursue the same passion since the first time I saw them. I believe that teaching, using some economic terms, utilizes love as the main capital. A teacher who still wants to teach is a person filled with love and ready to give and share love to others. I think that right now people seek and clamor for opportunities to express their love more in the things that they do. But teachers, like me, do not need to make an effort to love more since loving is embedded in our job description. This sounds easy yet very challenging at the same time There are even times that even as young as I am, I am forced to grow old and be a parent to my student, to find solutions to problems I have not even encountered in my life, and to find hope from students who don’t even see the light within them. Why do we do these things? We do these things definitely not because of the salary given to our employers but because finding the most loving thing to do is integral to the desire of a real teacher. One of the commercials that I really enjoy watching because I feel I can perfectly relate with it is the Nescafe commercial about a teacher narrating her story of her teaching profession and answering the question, “Para kanino ka ba bumabangon?” In the same way, I believe that this commercial perfectly illustrates how teachers are passionate about life because of what they do. I myself consider teaching as one of my primary motivations of facing a new day. More than the challenges, I believe that teaching excites me since it provides me with several new opportunities to express my deepest humanity in the act of loving others, particularly my students. But aside from being given the opportunity to love, I believe that another gain of teaching is the experience of being loved. One of the concrete manifestations of this is my experience of having a family. Because of teaching, I experienced having more than an extended family in the person of my students and parent. I consider my students and parents as family members and not as clients. This is the reason why my students and teachers love me not as a business partner as well but as a relative ready to love them the same way. In the same way, just recently, I saw some of my students who graduated last year. Seeing them in their college uniforms is such a great feeling. But I guess the best part is to be able to update each other about what is new about them and being able to look back at the memories of high school. A heartwarming message was given to me by one of my students saying that I have contributed to his growth as a person, and that he is very thankful for all of the efforts that I have made just for him to value his education. This made me realize that teaching entails sacrifice and emptying. We teachers empty ourselves as we meet our students in the classroom in the hope that they would be filled. Emptying in itself is a risk that we teachers face every day. In our daily grind, we give our whole selves to our students without a strong assurance of a concrete change. But as we give ourselves to our students, we rely on their goodness and infinite giftedness that someday whatever we are doing would help them find their real purpose and mission in their life. As they find themselves, we not only help others towards greater self-discovery, rather we impart more hope to them as they further appreciate life in its fullest sense Likewise, the wealth that we received in the form of students’ appreciation, parents’ praises and the recognition of others seeing our capacity to be able to make a difference to the lives of others are more than the abundance of the love we have given and a part of ourselves that we have shared for this risk. Thus, great risk, greater returns. Contrary to the belief of other people, I am a living witness that there is, indeed, wealth in teaching. As a matter fact, this profession has been truly a gift for me since it is through this that I’ve been experiencing a lot of growth beyond the monetary and worldly standards. To be given an opportunity to love and to experience the abundance of love is in itself satisfying because it continues to lead me to greater happiness and appreciation of the true meaning of life lived to the fullest and shared with other people. Sam is currently teaching at Xavier University High School - Ateneo de Cagayan as the Social Studies teacher for various 3rd and 4th year classes. All in all, Sam handles 7 classes. He Handles the Social Order Club and the Youth Christian Life Community Clubs, which are two of the clubs under the socio-spiritual cluster of the said school.