In my 22 years of living in the world of the academe, I discovered that teaching is not as easy as it seems. It’s actually intricate, profound, complex… a combination of art, a paradox and a practical joke.
Teaching is an art because it requires mastery. You cannot teach without being a master of your craft. Just as a painter has to master every color and stroke of his paintbrush and so does a teacher has to master his field of expertise. This is why every teacher has to have a certain specialization by majoring into different subject area and discipline. It’s an art because though you have the passion to be a contemporary into the world of the four-corner-of-a-classroom, it takes time to master the art of teaching. It is a gift to be a teacher .it’s hard work to be a good one. Many are naturally born with it, yet only a few become really good teachers, only after a long tedious years of toil and consistent perseverance. They say, teachers never die, they fade away and retire. But I dare say, teachers die! I believe, they do. Every day, we teachers have to die within us, for teaching is a conscious deliberate profession of self-giving. It is an art to teach. But it is a choice to be a teacher. In this impoverished hunger-stricken land, teaching is not a noble properly paid profession but a work of love, a partly unobtrusive hand of charity, a forgotten lyric of nationalism.
In every single act of teaching in everyday of our existence in the school, teachers become the modern symbol of this country: poor, tired to the marrow bone, used and abused. Yet in all these, we keep afloat even in the tumultuous tides and ebbs of our politicized education system and unfortunate chronic instability. While doctors and nurses flee abroad in the land of milk and honey, we stay behind to educate the uneducated-yet. Yes, we partake in the excesses and crumbs of the collective share of the OFW’s and businessmen’s remittances and takes, yet we stake our own blood and soul in every election done right here in our very soil.
Teaching is a paradox. It is an unending unconsummated marriage of contradictions. We teachers know this too well. Or may be too little.it is a paradox because the more we given ourselves to teach, the more we realize that we have not given enough. This applies not only to the subject matter of academic theories and mathematical formulas but also to the very act of giving one’s self. Seasoned world-famous teachers in history such as Socrates, Gandhi, Confucius and Christ, showed us that teaching is not merely a concoction of words and catatonic verbal performances. It is mirrored and magnified in the very lives we live. It is cleanse and purified in the everyday constant repetition of willful sacrifices. It is highlighted by the very act of total self-giving.
Lastly, teaching is a practical joke. You will not laugh at it, if you don’t understand it. In spite of the meager national budget allocated for education, in spite of the pitiful plight of teachers selling longganisa and Avon products, the long hours of work in the school and brought home test papers and lesson plans, early daily wake-up routine and late sleep, in spite of everything, we stick into teaching, because like a masochist, we can honestly say that we love it. We love looking at those promising growing up children reach their dreams.
We become a teacher and a parent, a woman and a man, an adult and a child, a friend and a critic, a lover and a detractor, a victim and a judge; we become everything possible as the infinite. Yet, unaware! We are simply drawn to these helpless little rascals without them meaning it, and without us knowing it. And that’s where the joke comes in. For if we do not put some smile in our wrinkled faces, and inject some laughter in our crazy stressful maddening world, we end up picking the garbage in an institution. But a good teacher knows how to do that. He knows how to laugh at himself. It is a choice. It is imperative. If we want this nation to prosper, we can send all our people to the land of dollars, milk and honey, but not our teachers. Humble though it seems, but I discovered that the only way to change the course of our destiny as a nation is first to change the mentality of our people. And we are never too late to do it. As an unknown philosopher said, “If you plan for a decade, plant trees. But if you plan for a century, teach children.”
By: Bernardito B. Cadatal | Teacher II | Sta. Rosa Elementary School | Pilar, Bataan
