“Napakaraming guro dito sa amin, ngunit bakit tila walang natira?”
This line from one of Gloc-9’s famous songs “Walang Natira” echoes sentiments not only of the teaching industry but the whole working class in the country. We produce thousands of graduates from different sectors yearly but still, the work force always seems to be inadequate. We still force employees to take multiple loads and work consecutive shifts to get things done.
This situation is widely felt especially in the education industry. Aside from the teachers’ main role to educate students, they are also required to do administrative work instead of improving their instruction. Pile-high of paper works are needed to be compiled and submitted in addition to the manual checking of students’ outputs. This task puts big impact on the teaching quality since it consumes more time on doing unnecessary work rather than focusing on their goal – to teach.
While it is undeniable that teaching is a noble profession, fulfillment cannot pay the bills. The joy of being able to teach and touch lives is incomparable. However, joy alone cannot help you survive especially nowadays. People need to be practical and earn money. People need to put food on their table and roof over their heads. They need to survive.
The respect for teachers might be high, but the compensation for their hard work remain to be one of the lowest. Longer working hours and heavier work load do not mean they get bigger figures on their paycheck. In fact, some of the teachers even have to shell out in order to meet their teaching goals. In most cases, the salary would take weeks, or even months to arrive which makes the situation worse for teachers.
This is the sad reality that our unsung heroes face. This is also the reason why, just like what Gloc-9 said, we have a lot of teachers but it feels like it isn’t. Most of them opt to leave the teaching field to find careers that offer higher salary. Some even go out of the country to find better opportunities.
Maybe in time, they will be appreciated equally not just by words but by the amount they get paid for their service. Maybe in time, they won’t have to abandon their dreams or compromise their health in order to provide better future for their families. But for now, they can only continue to fight and change the world by teaching one student at a time.
By: Mr. Noel Aratan Mendoza
