A note for teachers

February 23-29, 2012

Prologue

                As  school year 2011-2012 draws to a close, NRWP would like to give credit to teachers who filled the lives of their students with valuable lessons, fun colors, engaging activities, and much needed support in times of disasters and unprecedented events. Indeed, for many in Negros Island, surviving this school year is a one-of-a kind feat with the double catastrophe our people have to contend with. But teachers help lift their students' burdens by rationally explaining the phenomena of our changing world with humanely approaches.

                The following article is actually the sermon of Rev. Fr. Rafael E. Cabarles, OAR, renowned Recollect educator and school administrator. Fr. Cabarles delivered this during the Holy Mass to celebrate the San Carlos City Private Schools Association (SCCPSA) Teachers' Day last February 3, three days before the devastating quake hit Central Visayas.

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                St. John Chrysostom once said of us, teachers: "If there ever are men who do great-if not the greatest service to their country and people-they are TEACHERS. For teachers are like candles that light in consuming themselves." Teaching is one of the most vital [careers] that decides the fate of the world-a world in which you and I has a stake. If there ever is a job more praiseworthy and laudable it is teaching. Congrats! A day to "RECOGNIZE AND HONOR OUR TEACHERS."

                We, teachers, are the expungers of errors and the discoverer of truth. In us and in our collective courage and love to teach depends the very strength and survival of a democracy. In our hands, lie the very delicate task of infusing and cultivating a correct conscience and a righteous will upon the young. We are the makers of the leaders for tomorrow; we are the architect and builder of the younger generations.

                However, teaching is a delicate lifetime vocation. Let us bear in mind that when we teach, we are discharging the Sacred Trust which parents and society repose in us by entrusting into our hands the physical, intellectual and moral formation of their sons and daughters for the citizens of tomorrow. We are in "LOCO PARENTIS." That is why teaching must not just be motivated by mere "musts" and "likes" but above all by LOVE because only LOVE makes sacrifices; because only LOVE prompts one to give and share the good he has with another; because only LOVE and LOVE alone shares with the object of its love, its riches, presence, life, its very self and existence.

                Teaching, like marriage and the priesthood, is a VOCATION.  It has its satisfaction and countless small and not so small frustrations: misunderstanding, quarrels, monotony and provocations. That is why teachers to be successful must have INTELLECTUAL COMPETENCE that fires the minds of his students with ideas, aspirations and visions of the yet unknown; be PATIENT and be burning with COURAGE so that you won't shrink at the encounter of the first defeat and frustrations; be ALIVE in the classrooms, giving fun here and there to keep students awake; have IMAGINATIVE SYMPATHY for the needs of an INDIVIDUAL STUDENT; must possess visions of where they are going and lastly and foremost must have the LOVE FOR TEACHING.

                Teaching must not therefore be just a mere lifework, a profession, an occupation, a struggle. Teaching is hanap buhay. Dili hanap pera. It must be a PASSION. It must be LOVE for only teachers that love teaching could conquer ignorance. Only teacher's sincerity and depth, conviction plus LOVE could teach successfully and easily.

                Teaching is not a soft job. If anyone has dreamed of taking [the] teaching career, let him be informed that teaching is not easy or a soft job. It is far from that. It is nerve-breaking, it is frustrating and more than irritating. It is provoking. It is a 24-hr task of patience.

                An accountant leaves his office in the afternoon and with that he also leaves the problems in the office. But to be a teacher is to be a teacher for 24 hours a day. This has to be since the school building is not just a mere building filled with provocative and kinder characters combined. It is a melting pot boiling with fierce passions as elemental hate and love, envy, anxiety, rage, jealousy, grief and so forth.

                School buildings are most probably the hottest spot in any town. And to be in these buildings and to deal with such combination of restless youngsters are really a purgatory for those who have no love for teaching.

                The classroom becomes a stable filled with wild stallions. They could not possibly bear the tension of the classroom upon their nerves. They get headaches and so on and so forth during the class days of the week. After a few months, they are already exhausted, tired, bored, and certainly looks older than their age. Some them would appear as if they had suffered indigestion the whole night before.

                How could one who has no love for the teaching career ever inspire, subdue, placate, amuse or try to be all things to a roomful of restless young people without getting nervous breakdown sometime during the year? Really, a teacher who teaches because of circumstance rather than a TRUE VOCATION is just killing himself in front of his provocative students who are happy when their teachers are mad.

                Only LOVE can teach successfully. Christ's mission of LOVE could not have been a success had He not taught LOVE, so also with US. WE should have LOVE for [the] teaching career if ever WE want to teach-for only [a] teacher [who] loves teaching could teach successfully. Only teacher and his love could convey to the young the maximum aims of education.

                Teachers, let us make our school the second home of our children, where under its bosom with its atmosphere of piety, honesty, and patriotism our children are instructed and educated. Take note of what I say; there is an important distinction between instruction and education. Instruction is a means while education is an end. Instruction is to the intellect while education is to will. Instruction tends to produce skills while education tempers character and initiates virtues.

                Schools are not like sugar centrals through one door of which the young child enters like a raw sugarcane and from the other door the youth goes out successfully manufactured and refined (sugar?) man. It is not as easy as that. Schools work like factory, but only give out a successfully manufactured product when they are made by the machine of LOVE and SACRIFICE. Your school can only reap a good harvest of youth, genuine and polished when and only when your school is staffed with devoted, dedicated and committed teachers, not just involved teachers.