By Ina Gonda-Ramos, LPT
I am a third-generation educator in the family. My grandmother was a public school teacher in the ‘50s and my mother in the ‘80s. Two years after I was born in 1990, my mother took a leap of faith and started her own school that we lovingly call Scuola Maria. The youngest of three girls, I decided to take the same path and chose to specialize in Child Development and Education at the University of Asia and the Pacific.
Right after my graduation in 2012, I returned to my hometown in Batangas and helped my mom run our 20-year-old small private school. While most of my friends advanced in their professional lives in the corporate world with high compensation and travel perks, there I was, doing the best I could to make meaning in my daily job as a full-time educator in our small community. While many thought I was living a life of privilege from running a private school business, little did people know that this “privilege” comes with a lot of difficulties and business competition.
When the lockdown started, I was not spared from the physical and mental exhaustion brought by COVID-19. I had to make decisions that did not please a lot of people. Our school was two weeks away from graduation ceremonies, and I had to cancel all of it with no promise of any form of celebration to compensate. Most people did not understand why I had to cancel abruptly when I could have just rescheduled the most awaited picture-perfect program on our stage. It broke my heart into pieces knowing that what parents considered a loss on their end not to see their children walk up the stage even for a few minutes was equally a loss for us teachers who cherished each student. As a school administrator, I had to decide for the common good—a principle UA&P has instilled in me very well as a student and as an education practitioner.
I spent most days and nights of April researching and talking to all the people I looked up to in the business and education sector, all of them fellow UA&P alumni. When I thought I was all alone carrying the burden of the pandemic, I was supported by friends and mentors from the University.
Every second that the COVID-19 cases rose felt like a countdown to the loss of jobs of my reliable faculty members, deprivation of private school education access to my students, and an end to my mother’s passion and legacy. I didn’t want any of it to happen. Nobody would have wanted all of these to happen.
Our small school is barely surviving in this pandemic. It pained me that I had limited capacity to help everyone. There was no perfect solution to how we could continue education in a way that is fair to everyone. I knew there were various unique living conditions in the market I was trying to serve. I had to do something.
With limited financial resources, I was able to create a program from scratch. We reduced the tuition fee rates by Php20,000 while embracing full digital transition. The Internet technology is now our best friend, yet it is also our enemy. It is the fastest growing industry today, yet it is the most unstable companion. It keeps on developing, yet it drags us all behind every single time it goes through changes and maintenance. It promises a lot of futuristic things, yet it seems that we can’t move forward.
But this is not just the new normal. This is our reality.
I also received an opportunity to serve in a public institution. I have always wanted to teach in a university, and a post opened up at the College of Teacher Education in Batangas State University. I took the job for many reasons, but most importantly because I wanted to take part in helping our country prepare our student teachers to become the best professional teachers our nation needs.
It did not take me a week to see a completely different world with its own glaring realities. I’ve met students who have braced the storm using banana leaves as umbrella, climbed the roofs of their humble homes, and walked kilometers just to have a good signal while listening to my lectures. How humbling it is to see them value education right now despite their personal circumstances. These are my students now, and they are our children’s future educators.
I know that nothing in our educational setting now is ideal. I know, as a teacher, that learning from a distance is nothing compared to learning face to face. But learning is not limited to schooling.
More than anything, we need our students to learn how to embrace changes, manage stress, and solve problems because these are life skills that will make them better citizens of our country in the future.
I always tell people who want to start their own school that owning a school isn’t an income-generating endeavor. Contrary to what people think and imagine, school owners are never profit-hungry. Being in the education sector means being in the business of human development. Our “products” are never tangible. It takes years, even decades, to see the fruits of our labor.
We spend countless hours preparing lessons while constantly learning and investing in new technologies. We receive calls 24/7 from parents complaining how difficult everything is. We are judged for every little thing we do as if we have never done anything right for our students, as if we want to make everyone suffer and feel stressed.
Exposed to both public and private education systems, I have seen families with comfortable living conditions and families who just make ends meet each day for basic needs. Regardless of circumstance, we need parents who see us as equal partners in this journey. We need parents who value education not just to advance academically but to help each child reach his or her fullest potentials.
Parents, we know that this is all new to you, but remember that you are and will always be the primary educators of your children. We can never do our jobs without you.
We also know that our job is difficult, but it becomes unbearable when everyone thinks we don’t know how to love. It is exactly our love for our students that keeps us going despite the difficulties. Even if everything is not ideal right now, you have no idea how much we can’t wait to do high fives again, how much we want to give everyone a hug again, and how much we want to do what we know best in the best way we know.
We can’t give up now. We can’t stop right now because more than anything, educators are the nation’s partners in human development. So much debate has been going on about #academicfreeze, but what good will it really do?
We are not machines that you can just put to a stop when something fails. We are humans who constantly need development. The only way we will progress is if we are challenged.
Sure, we are all uncomfortable now but learning never comes from comfort zones. Let this pandemic be a lesson to us, that education is an avenue for character development. When we all try to become better versions of ourselves despite adversities, we will become a better nation.
If we continue education in the time of corona, we will be one step closer to a better world.
To all my fellow educators, you are our world’s silent heroes and today’s frontliners. Happy teachers’ month!
Banner photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.
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