Teaching is the noblest profession. So, how’s teaching as a job nowadays? I remember as a child, I’ve always regarded teachers with awe and so much respect. I’ve always imbibed that maestros are people you should bow your head to when you meet them in the streets, in the hallways and in some place else. I just have so much regard and esteem for these people but it never really seeped in my mind that one day, I’d become one and so, here am I writing an article in the hope it might be published and read by people who will be influenced, or moved somehow. Teaching is also a WRITING profession. In today’s standards.
By what standards you might ask? In the endless cycle of non stop paper works, reports , innovations, etc. etc. Teachers are expected to do their lesson plans and visual aids daily aside from record keeping and other class/ advisory works and reports. So why do we need to further add more pain given the fact that in today’s set of youngsters, we are already besieged with more and more reports like RPMS, DLL, IPCRF, SLAC sessions , etc . thattells the same old thing over and over again and entails more and more time of the already back broken poor teacher who cannot actually focus now and oversee his/her teaching quality? Should we be more happy that we can see that it’s just worth his/her salt? Can’t we be more concentrated on the teaching delivery of each and every teacher? His or her methods, and how efficient are they in the teaching learning process?
Perhaps it is high time that this problem of the maestro is given more grains of consideration and highlighted as a pressing concern. The future of our millions of learners are at stake such that this cannot be simply ignored. Maybe in times past, when the Philippines is dubbed as the Sick Man of Asia, this was ignored but now that we are graduating finally, as a Rising Tiger in Asia, can’t our teachers be more vigorously tasked to present effective lessons on their differently abled students than to be more busybodied in determined what reports/ papers to pass, required pronto? If students are stressed with the multitude of tasks that they are required to deal with, then it’s the same boat as with teachers who are now rattled with cumbersome, sometimes merely repetitious tasks in endless cycles.
Relieve the students from too much hurried education and harried life. Relieve likewise the mentors, the facilitators of learning and free the educational set up from stress which haunts them, even as they teach. Life can be outlined into three tenets of simplicity: Live, Learn & Love. How can our students love &enjoy life& learning if the teachers are stressed to the DepEd’s fault by constantly bombarding them with overwhelming reports and tons of paperworks in this digital age? I believe teachers are meant to teach by simple analogy as writers are meant to write.
Take the case of Finland. Students are never pressured by quizzes and tests. They are rarely given. Teachers are never burdened with a mountainloadof paperworks but they are the most lauded school system in the whole wide world. Finland’s students surprised the world by topping international tests. Which factor catapulted Finland into this scenario? Less stressed teachers who are more concentrated towards real teaching. By real teaching, we mean effective teaching by teachers who are burdened less by repetitious paper works because their government recognized the need to do that, in order to have efficient learners.
By: Ronaldo V. Tiangco | MT I | MNHS Poblacion
