When teachers fire first volley

TREE PLANTING DIPLOMACY. President Benigno Aquino III hopes his chance meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at APEC tree-planting event bears fruit of reconciliation between neighboring nations.

One swallow does not a summer make. Unless one side swallows his pride.

But the chance meeting is a far cry from the ASEAN- China Fair where DTI Secretary Domingo represented PH, the feature country at the time, when PNoy was disinvited because the Spratleys storm was spilling out of the teacup.

SCHIZOPHRENIC DIPLOMACY.

Within 48 hours PNoy hopped to Myanmar and started again talking tough (although in more measured diplomatese).

One side is planting a tree, the other insists on shoveling.

TEACHERSSTRIKE. The Manila Public School Teachers Association Inc. (MPSTA) joined with Alliance of Concerned Teachers ( ACT) to strike for pay – 55,000 teachers from 800 schools in Manila, QC, Makati, Mandaluyong, and Muntinlupa linked with 100,000 others from Davao, Southern Tagalog and Eastern Visayas.

The MPSTA and ACT demand hiking entry-level salaries for teachers from 18,549 to 25,000 and nonteaching personnel from 9,000 to

15,000.

Congress’ 2015 national budget has no allocation for a pay hike for public schoolteachers.

FIRST SLIPPER DROPPED. ACT Chair Benjamin Valbuena said they will press for inclusion of teacher’s salary hike before the budget’s approval by the Senate and President Aquino. MPSTA president added, “The sit-down strike is the opening salvo of our campaign called ‘Strike for Salary Increase and Quality Education, Strike against Pork and Corruption.’” (More to follow if the Presdint does not react, with threat “to go on mass leave.”

Earlier last week, Mayor Erap announced Christmas bonus for Manila’s Finest and for City Hall staff, but none for the city’s school teachers.

Nothing new, really. My mother, a public school teacher at Torres High School, said that teachers used to have a much higher pay than police because of their responsibility for educating the next generation.

Keystone cops pound our streets to keep the peace and order; teachers keep the peace and order in classrooms.

Manila City Hall neither confirms nor denies that the absence of benefits for teachers owes to the history of Hizzoner Erap being kicked out of a Jesuit school in primary grade.

Erap says that he was expelled for fighting, not for academics.

TURNOVER. With the best of intentions, party-list Rep. Silvestre H. Bello III filed House Bill No.4501 to lower the compulsory retirement age of public school teachers to 60 years old. Bello said 14,000 newly licensed teachers each year can not land teaching jobs because the posts are held by senior teachers.

What to do with teachers who have made it their life-long vocation? When Onofre Pagsanjan was asked why he continues to teach into his old age and despite his exhaustion, he answered: “Because I get the opportunity to serve people. Because it’s not only the stomach that has to be filled; it could be that the stomach is full, but kung kulang dito [points to his heart] at kulang dito [points to his head], baliwala yung pagkabusog ng tiyan.”

My Aunt Leilia Zaide taught well into her 80’s at PWU because she loved to teach and was loved by her students. Teaching is a gift, and cannot be easily imparted.

POESTAYSCOY. Senator Grace Poe on Thursday said she is cautious about revealing her plans for the 2016 presidential elections to avoid a repeat of what happened to the presidential campaign of her father, the late Presidential aspirant Fernando Poe Jr.

Poe made the statement after Vice President Jejomar Binay said Thursday that Poe could be his vice presidential running mate in the 2016 polls, and that the match would be unbeatable.

The lady senator didn’t say if as presidential standard bearer, she would ask VP Binay to run again as her vice president. FEEDBACK: jaz_aide@yaho.com