Empowering teachers

October 5 was World Teachers’ Day, and social media was filled with greetings for and anecdotes on them. I had an experience of being a lecturer for high school students recently, and for just two hours I really felt how tough it is to be a teacher.

It was a journalism lecture for student publication writers from junior to senior high, and they threw in three elementary student writers. When I greeted them “good afternoon,” I got silence and chatter as a response. They were not even looking at me.

There and then, I felt dread. “Is this really happening?” I asked myself. There I was, trying to get the students’ attention, trying to simplify things, trying to get them to discuss writing. Twenty minutes into it my throat was becoming hoarse.

There and then I realized the difficulty of teachers facing these little terrors for six to eight hours every day, students whose attentions are on things other than books and the lecture.

An advice from my teacher-friend saved me. “You have to be creative,” she said. “Kids nowadays don’t listen much to lectures. Let them do group work. You’ll be surprised.” That group work indeed turned out well.

When you teach journalism, you measure how aware they are about the issues in their school and society. I was impressed at how they articulated local issues such as the failure of the school to deliver their PE uniforms, broken down facilities and their classmates’ public display of affection.

They were aware of Martial Law and the war on drugs. But the problem was the limited opportunity for them to read. When I asked them if they read newspapers, they said they don’t. In this digital age, Facebook and free data rule.

We have to dread the rule of fake news. I share a point raised by a teacher and musical artist Cabring Cabrera, who said that education is key to making young people critical, tmaking them able to fight fake news by being open-minded and aware of issues. But that points to the problem with our Department of Education (DepEd) that is pushing for the K to 12 program yet has forgotten to put the money into molding the young people. DepEd underspent P16 billion in 2015 and another P21.5 billion last year. You have to wonder why this money was not spent to provide more textbooks and other educational materials or facilities.

The Alliance of Concerned Teacher (ACT) dreads that these unused funds will just go back to the National Treasury or to the pork barrel and thus go straight to the politicos’ “pet projects.” Teachers get a meager salary increase (a mere P500 a month) while soldiers’ salaries doubled from P14,000 to P28,000. What does this say about our government’s priorities?

DepEd also failed to support Lumad education. Right now there are hundreds of Lumad schools run by NGOs and churches in Mindanao with teachers sacrificing a lot in fighting illiteracy. Yet DepEd failed to totally support these schools, which are being attacked by paramilitary elements and soldiers. For these reasons, it is worth saluting the teachers for their sacrifices and service. Also worth supporting is their demand for higher subsidy for education. –

From SunStar Davao