One died, the other almost did it, and the other is starting life with a promise. This in brief is the story of my three students.
A teacher’s life, as a cliché has it, is intertwined with students’ lives. This is both an understatement and an exaggeration. As teachers, we cannot connect to all the lives that sit in our classrooms. There are not a few times when somebody just springs out of nowhere and claims that he/she once sat in my classroom. My memory cannot keep with the number of faces. However, teachers connect with students’ lives and are equally transformed, in deep and meaningful ways. The business of educating minds, touching hearts and transforming lives are not one way streets. A teacher is equally subjected to be changed, no matter how indignant the resistance or slow he/she may be to change.
Students’ lives leave marks to their teachers. I, for one, keep a record to some of my students’ lives, like my own markings (palatandaang bato) into life. Some of these lives are harrowing due to deprivation, inspiring as to how passionately they are lived, and almost all of them a blessing. Come graduation time, as teachers, we feel mushy (or emo, as my students would correct me) knowing that you are cutting your umbilical cord with them. Or so, we think.
Jenny. She recently died of infection after going through a caesarian birth. Before she died, a close friend e-mailed me of a need to help Jenny tide with the financial burden of giving birth. The skyrocketing hospital bills made Jenny chose the cheapest hospital possible. Jenny is like any hopeful youth (she expressed her desire to work with me in Pampanga sooner than possible), betrayed by a negligent and mediocre health system.
Jenny is a burst of laughter. Like many young people of her age, she likes to connect with friends. Her sister recounts that even while Jenny was grimacing in pain in her death bed, her fingers were always searching for her cell phone. Small in frame (thus she is always treated as the “bunso” in the class) but big in heart, she is almost always in her restrained giggles, to a fault maybe.
Jenny comes from a humble beginning. Her going to college was paved for from a meager family contribution, including a sister who had to do menial jobs. However, this humble beginning did not make Jenny bitter or less generous. In my class as in life, she has learned to fight by sheer diligence and faith to God. Jenny is also Miss Diary, documenting her battles in life in silent observation and reflection. Even at her deathbed, she was scribbling words. Her diary speaks of her great love to a man who became the father of her child. Her diary also speaks of her dreams for the baby she painstakingly delivered to life.
In perspective, Jenny’s death has just sparked a battle by her relatives and friends against a negligent hospital. Jenny’s death is a call to action, to wield all efforts against an uncaring health system of mediocrity that only honors and provides proper services to those who have more in life. I still do not know where this battle will lead, as students and teachers alike are indignant to Jenny’s avoidable death. But whatever form this battle will take, we know, Jenny’ life is not only about her but about all of us. Negligence, uncaring and mediocrity should have no room when we defend the lives of our loved ones, no matter what our status in life is.
We all have to get together to bring this message home.
Allan. He committed suicide but was fortunate enough to have survived. He had forgotten to lock his room, which he normally does, and was seen almost lifeless with saliva coming out of his mouth. Just in the nick of time, he was brought to the hospital and after hours of ordeal with death, he was revived back to life.
Allan is often up with something, inside or outside the classroom. He is the leader type, an idealist of the active kind, almost always prodding others to act, to move, to change the world, if need be. Abandoned by parents who migrated abroad, Allan was left under the care of relatives. He is into various types of relationship. You almost feel like these relationships are his ways of groping into dark for the comfort and stability that these relationships might bring.
His job is like a vengeance to life. He was abandoned when young but he will not let others be so, thus the intensity he puts into his works with abandoned children. His house is an extension of his work. Even in the hospital where he recuperates, stray kids come and go, worried about their Kuya Allan.
The doctor noted that Allan suffers from clinical depression. Vehement that he is not crazy, Allan, at the moment, refuses to see a psychiatrist. His classmates, relatives and few other teachers are collectively working together to make Allan be cared for, and let him know that he matters, and hopefully, that he feels that he is truly loved, if not us, but by the Divine God. Everyone is also helping Allan confront this sickness, give it a name and learn to disarm it. We all have to see the Allans in our lives.
Sarah. She graduated magna cum laude. Her closest of friends were so ecstatic knowing that Sarah was tasked to give the valedictory address. Meticulous as she normally is, Sarah asked me to practice her prepared speech and I was more than willing. As expected she delivered her speech with wit and élan.
Sarah is the inquisitive yet very responsible student. Give her a task, and she will put not only her creativity but also her own intense diligence into it. However, Sarah is not only into academic excellence. In the class, you can readily sense how she feels protective of her classmates. Sarah represents the best in us.
We should, we must, raise young people who not only have the IQ (intelligent quotient) to make it in this world, but are also carrier of EQ (emotional quotient) if not MQ (moral quotient) to care for others, especially those who are less fortunate. If it is not a tall order, we should also raise children with high SQ (spiritual quotient). This I think is the only way to recover this nation from the moral and leadership bankruptcy it has long endured.
In the evenings when I retire from a day’s work (checking test papers, preparing lesson plans, and concocting excitements to a heavily internet and techie induced young minds), a teacher like me can sometimes end the day with a prayer or two. As in the classroom with my students, or in my bedroom, or in life itself, I can only murmur a blessing and a prayer: Live Jesus in our hearts!
tobe_wtdpoor@yahoo.com
A teacher’s life, as a cliché has it, is intertwined with students’ lives. This is both an understatement and an exaggeration. As teachers, we cannot connect to all the lives that sit in our classrooms. There are not a few times when somebody just springs out of nowhere and claims that he/she once sat in my classroom. My memory cannot keep with the number of faces. However, teachers connect with students’ lives and are equally transformed, in deep and meaningful ways. The business of educating minds, touching hearts and transforming lives are not one way streets. A teacher is equally subjected to be changed, no matter how indignant the resistance or slow he/she may be to change.
Students’ lives leave marks to their teachers. I, for one, keep a record to some of my students’ lives, like my own markings (palatandaang bato) into life. Some of these lives are harrowing due to deprivation, inspiring as to how passionately they are lived, and almost all of them a blessing. Come graduation time, as teachers, we feel mushy (or emo, as my students would correct me) knowing that you are cutting your umbilical cord with them. Or so, we think.
Jenny. She recently died of infection after going through a caesarian birth. Before she died, a close friend e-mailed me of a need to help Jenny tide with the financial burden of giving birth. The skyrocketing hospital bills made Jenny chose the cheapest hospital possible. Jenny is like any hopeful youth (she expressed her desire to work with me in Pampanga sooner than possible), betrayed by a negligent and mediocre health system.
Jenny is a burst of laughter. Like many young people of her age, she likes to connect with friends. Her sister recounts that even while Jenny was grimacing in pain in her death bed, her fingers were always searching for her cell phone. Small in frame (thus she is always treated as the “bunso” in the class) but big in heart, she is almost always in her restrained giggles, to a fault maybe.
Jenny comes from a humble beginning. Her going to college was paved for from a meager family contribution, including a sister who had to do menial jobs. However, this humble beginning did not make Jenny bitter or less generous. In my class as in life, she has learned to fight by sheer diligence and faith to God. Jenny is also Miss Diary, documenting her battles in life in silent observation and reflection. Even at her deathbed, she was scribbling words. Her diary speaks of her great love to a man who became the father of her child. Her diary also speaks of her dreams for the baby she painstakingly delivered to life.
In perspective, Jenny’s death has just sparked a battle by her relatives and friends against a negligent hospital. Jenny’s death is a call to action, to wield all efforts against an uncaring health system of mediocrity that only honors and provides proper services to those who have more in life. I still do not know where this battle will lead, as students and teachers alike are indignant to Jenny’s avoidable death. But whatever form this battle will take, we know, Jenny’ life is not only about her but about all of us. Negligence, uncaring and mediocrity should have no room when we defend the lives of our loved ones, no matter what our status in life is.
We all have to get together to bring this message home.
Allan. He committed suicide but was fortunate enough to have survived. He had forgotten to lock his room, which he normally does, and was seen almost lifeless with saliva coming out of his mouth. Just in the nick of time, he was brought to the hospital and after hours of ordeal with death, he was revived back to life.
Allan is often up with something, inside or outside the classroom. He is the leader type, an idealist of the active kind, almost always prodding others to act, to move, to change the world, if need be. Abandoned by parents who migrated abroad, Allan was left under the care of relatives. He is into various types of relationship. You almost feel like these relationships are his ways of groping into dark for the comfort and stability that these relationships might bring.
His job is like a vengeance to life. He was abandoned when young but he will not let others be so, thus the intensity he puts into his works with abandoned children. His house is an extension of his work. Even in the hospital where he recuperates, stray kids come and go, worried about their Kuya Allan.
The doctor noted that Allan suffers from clinical depression. Vehement that he is not crazy, Allan, at the moment, refuses to see a psychiatrist. His classmates, relatives and few other teachers are collectively working together to make Allan be cared for, and let him know that he matters, and hopefully, that he feels that he is truly loved, if not us, but by the Divine God. Everyone is also helping Allan confront this sickness, give it a name and learn to disarm it. We all have to see the Allans in our lives.
Sarah. She graduated magna cum laude. Her closest of friends were so ecstatic knowing that Sarah was tasked to give the valedictory address. Meticulous as she normally is, Sarah asked me to practice her prepared speech and I was more than willing. As expected she delivered her speech with wit and élan.
Sarah is the inquisitive yet very responsible student. Give her a task, and she will put not only her creativity but also her own intense diligence into it. However, Sarah is not only into academic excellence. In the class, you can readily sense how she feels protective of her classmates. Sarah represents the best in us.
We should, we must, raise young people who not only have the IQ (intelligent quotient) to make it in this world, but are also carrier of EQ (emotional quotient) if not MQ (moral quotient) to care for others, especially those who are less fortunate. If it is not a tall order, we should also raise children with high SQ (spiritual quotient). This I think is the only way to recover this nation from the moral and leadership bankruptcy it has long endured.
In the evenings when I retire from a day’s work (checking test papers, preparing lesson plans, and concocting excitements to a heavily internet and techie induced young minds), a teacher like me can sometimes end the day with a prayer or two. As in the classroom with my students, or in my bedroom, or in life itself, I can only murmur a blessing and a prayer: Live Jesus in our hearts!
tobe_wtdpoor@yahoo.com
