My students inspire me to teach. Like an artist facing a blank canvas everyday, I make brush strokes of knowledge on their minds with all the masterful ways I know that I could muster. There are days when I am at my best, there are days too when I am not but I have the same amount of passion every day they come into my class with cheerful eyes and thirsty minds. Their minds are also like flexible pieces of clay waiting to be molded by tender hands that can be gentle most times, or harder if necessary. My students are like my children from another mother, and it is my turn to be their mother in my class for the hour. It has quite an advantage to have a teens and pre-teens in my class who are akin to incomplete sculptures waiting to be sculptured further by trimming their rough edges, not for just knowledge but more importantly, for character. There is truth in saying that the best way to learn is to teach. I learn much about human nature and of human emotions with every student who comes to me with a problem, in lesson or of something else. I am inspired by my students. What particularly fascinates me is an eerie feeling that I am in front of professionals that they will later become while recognizing their adolescent faces and I am in front of professionals that they will later become while recognizing their adolescent faces and I am watching all of us in a movie in my mind. My students- they are my daily inspiration.

By: Mrs. Gemma M. Manalo | Teacher 3 | Bataan National High School