"It's the lifelong vocation of teachers to make superstars out of the children entrusted to their tutelage."
"It's the lifelong vocation of teachers to make superstars out of the children entrusted to their tutelage."
As the grandson of a former UP president and prewar Secretary of Public Instruction, and the son of a former UP dean, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for teachers.
In this country, theirs is among the most thankless tasks around. They’re regularly asked to volunteer for the often dangerous work of manning the precincts during elections. As a group, they’ve run up billions of pesos of personal debt to informal lenders, requiring the GSIS to come to their rescue recently with refinancing schemes.
And even if we’re told that today’s public school teachers earn even more than their private school counterparts, we still hear stories about teachers using their own money to spend for school supplies, just because of the legendary bureaucracy at the Department of Education.
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This is why it’s timely this month to celebrate the 11th anniversary of the National Teachers Month (NTM) from Sept. 5 to Oct. 5. This year’s theme is “I teach. What’s your superpower?” In this double play on words, it reminds us of the heroism of our teachers as well as the lifelong vocation of teachers to make superstars out of the children entrusted to their tutelage.
The annual celebration of NTM started back in 2008 as a simple initiative to pay regular homage to the role of teachers, inspired by the declaration in 1993 of Oct. 5 as World Teachers Day by the UNESCO. In 2011, upon the initiative of former DepEd head Bro. Armin Luistro and Metrobank Foundation president Aniceto Sobrepena, President Aquino officially proclaimed the period from Sept 5. to Oct 5. as National Teachers Month. This was followed in 2016 by R.A. 10743 designating every Oct. 5 as National Teachers Day in this country.
Since its inception, the annual observance of NTM has racked up a remarkable record of initiatives. Apart from the Presidential proclamation and Republic Act mentioned, a broad partnership of government and private sector has launched a total of 532 initiatives from 2012-2014. They’ve posted significant tri-media mileage totaling over P600 million worth of coverage over the same period. Facebook engagement by the general public exceeded 700,000 in 2015 alone.
We trust that the culminating activities on Oct. 5 will draw a lot of participation and interest from the general public, most of whom are parents if not also teachers themselves.
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Another profession pretty close to teaching is the increasingly popular vocation of personal or executive coaching. In a highly competitive world where beginners in the corporate rat race can use all the help they can get in terms of both skills training and life experience, the executive coach can provide a valuable boost and a leg up.
One of my grade school classmates has asked me to say a word or two about her daughter, the very fetching Candice Cepeda Velasco, who’s now a certified professional coach with Newfield Network. It’s a coach training organization that’s routinely ranked among the top three worldwide. Candice is also one of the few local coaches who’re credentialed by the International Coaching Federation, where she also sits on the board as Philippine representative.
Candice and her colleagues will be having an international event this Nov. 8 at the Conrad Hotel. It’s expected to be the biggest coaching and leadership event in Southeast Asia. All you future masters of the universe, stay tuned to your online networks for more news about this!
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The first reading today comes from the book of Ezra, the spiritual leader of the Jewish Restoration after their Babylonian exile. Chapter 6 recounts the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem at the instance of the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius, and the great joy with which the Jews reconstituted their priesthood and rites of worship.
The responsorial Psalm 122 carries forward the joyful theme, as pilgrims bid each other, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” But in the Gospel (Luke 8: 19-21), Jesus appears to veer elsewhere, appearing to turn His back on His own family and announcing that “my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”
What unifies all these readings is the theme of worshipful celebration, both within the temple in Jerusalem and the new Temple that Christ reconstituted with His body and His sacrifice, the new Church within Whom God is universally accessible to everyone who hears His word and acts on it.
Readers can write me at [email protected].
