“The things that you say and the things that you do, they [students] will always remember that all their lives.”
This is what Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said in her speech on Friday, October 5, before thousands of teachers who attended the World Teachers’ Day celebration at the Davao City National High School (DCNHS).
Every year, we celebrate teachers’ day through school programs, dance presentations, or even some surprise bouquet of flowers for them. They deserve all of this and a lot more. During our younger years we may have a terror teacher we dislike for being strict inside the classroom but little do we know then that these same teachers are also human beings. They get up very early in the morning to prepare for class, spend the entire day at school, go home in the afternoon to tend for their own families and still prepare for their lesson plans.
Being a teacher somehow requires you to go the extra mile. This profession is not limited on the four corners of the classroom alone.
That is why it is with so much bliss that the teachers must have felt when the city mayor would listen to their plea on subsidies. However, Duterte-Carpio asked the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Davao (ACT-Davao) chapter to have “doable, acceptable, and reasonable” solution to help Department of Education (DepEd) personnel.
The city mayor said she is willing to find a way to assist public educators and address their concerns given that they come up with a compromise that is legal and within the city government’s ability to pay.
With the current economic status of the Philippines, we could not blame the teachers, or any other workers for this matter, to rally for subsidy or increase in wages. It is no longer enough that their efforts are appreciated through dance numbers or bouquet of roses. At this time and age, given the amount of dedication our teachers put to their job, maybe they do deserve more to help them put food on the table.