INSIDE A TEACHER’S HEART PART 2

ROSALIE PARINAS OPPUS

What makes a teacher shouting for joy? Some of you may answer a big salary increase or a fat bonus. Others may say a promotion! But most of us teachers the answer is when all our students got a passing score from the given summative tests or a quarterly exams. This answer may cause others to raise eyebrows or even make snide comments but believe it or not this true for most of us teachers. When we administer tests to our students we feel like we are their real parents and we got nervous and excited to know the result of their examinations. We are on cloud nine and proud knowing that our students learned so much from us. Getting high scores from the tests are signs that learning has taken place.

Another reason that a teacher will shout for joy is that when your students graduated with flying colors. The feeling of joy intensifies when a parent or a former student will come to you and proudly tell you that he/ she graduated at the top of his/ her class because of you. When a teacher hears these words of praise, the feeling is pure happiness and pride. No amount of money or expensive gifts can substitute the gratitude and honor that a student is giving back to his/her teacher.

Finally, a teacher will definitely shout for joy when these former students will go back to their alma mater and visit their teacher. When they accept an invitation to be a guest of honor in the closing ceremony and express their gratitude to their teacher that they would not be in their present state of life if not with gentle but firm guidance of their teacher. These are the precious gifts that teachers secretly wanted to receive from their students. I thank the Lord Almighty that such gifts were already given to me.

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The author is Teacher III at Saguin Integrated School