WHY I AM A TEACHER ( a re-blog)

This article was written 3 years ago and was re-blogged in celebration of "International Teachers day"

By: Arnel L. Cadeliña

Dear Alyssa and Amiel:

Both of you asked me several times why I am teaching and why I left the corporate world. The frequency of your query is getting higher as you get older and you see your classmates riding in their shiny cars while both of you literally squeezed in the tricycle. I even remember a prayer of yours requesting the heaven and the saints to send me in far away places in order to earn the mighty dollars. Amiel even whisper to me that almost half of his classmates were boasting that their parents are OFWs and I should be one. How can I blame both of you? Your generation is bombarded daily of thousand advertisements tempting you to buy anything and everything. The TV, radio,cellphones and internet are part of your life that these so called technology helped you and your peers to have a blurred distinction between needs and wants. Sometimes when I hear you and your friends talking about the latest Nokia cell phone, I started to ponder that materialism already won the battle and my children are being groomed by the environment to be the next disciples.

My dear Alyssa and Amiel, you are very much correct that I earn less than the parents of your classmates. The OFW’s who are breaking their backs to feed, clothed and send their children to school are earning more than I. You should remember though that your classmates are enjoying the benefits in replacement of having the physical present of their parent. I know several OFW friends suffering homesickness, toiling from sunset to dawn and missing the important events of their growing up children in return for earning more. But remember though, majority of your classmates OFW parents were not provided good job opportunities in our country and going abroad for them is not an option but a necessity. Every time you kneel for a prayer, include prayers for them.

In your case, I am there when your tears are flowing when you fell in the bicycle; you hear my voice every night while I read stories; we watched wrestlemania together with both our feet up in the chair and sharing Gatorade and spit it loudly every time John Cena loses; we are both teary-eyed when we watched Superman dying ; we pillow fight in the wee hours of the morning; we play soccer until we can not stand anymore; we go to church together and held each other hands while singing the Lord’s Prayer. Would you believe I eagerly await the first time you will be in love?

There are other million things that we did together which you may vividly remember ten years down the road. The memories imprinted on you are irreplaceable. I can not earn dollars but I am with you while you are growing up. For me that’s the best thing in life.

Before I forgot, I am teaching because I am happy doing it. I worked for 14 years in the corporate world which help me build the house we call home. Lord even blessed you in having funds for your college education because of my incessant savings. However, working in a corporation and teaching are like Mars and Venus. In teaching, I found out that I can shape the future, that I am standing on the shoulders of the teachers before me who find teaching noble: Christ, Buddha, Confucious, Gandhi, Franklin, Rizal and million others. Your generation may call as nerds, geeks and weirdos but we are not treating it as a blasphemy but notice our passion. You must remember that a lot of people are successful because of being passionate and I am a passionate teacher at the same time a passionate parent. While I make sure that my students learned, I always find time to be with you.

When will we scale Mount Banahaw?