WE STARTED our in-service education and training (INSET) this week in Baguio City National High School (BCNHS) and it was only right to start it with the talk on spiritual motivation. The guidance of the Lord must have been with our principal, Ma’am Brenda Cariño, in choosing our speaker among others. I did not catch her name but it’s been remarkable to learn that she was a former judge (for 32 years if I remember it right) and is now dedicating her private life in delivering talks on spirituality and values guided by the teachings of the one and true teacher, Jesus.
Teachers face daunting tasks and challenges this school year, as every school year. Vacation is now over. It is time to go back to school and fulfill our job and obligation to God and country as teachers. The holiday should have rejuvenated our bodies but there is no holistic revitalization without spiritual motivation.
Without this, we cannot see the purpose of this job. Spiritual motivation is finding the purpose of, in our case, teaching. It is easy to talk about the nobility of teaching but it is far more different to feel it when experiencing the challenges in school. Teaching takes a lot energy from the teachers and administrators considering the workload and nature of the job. With spiritual motivation, we build that fire in us again. We try to understand our responsibilities- to share this light of knowledge and right attitude to the students.
Remember that idealism we had when we graduated to our first steps in our first school to teach. We had our imagination how we can help our students to become better individuals and successful persons. It is because we have faith in ourselves and in teaching. We were full of motivation driven by that spiritual motivation. Faith, hope, and love are all part of spiritual motivation. As years go by, we begin to understand that famous “reality bites” line. We encounter kinds of students we never think existed. Those many of them who go to school without knowing where they really are. We experienced conflict with our co-workers and administrators. Then we came to the realization that teaching is not really a vocation as believers call it but a job that provides food for the table. It is distressing to know that this is a reality. There are many teachers who already lost hope in the cause and nobility of teaching. Spiritual motivation tries to spark that hope and light inside us so that we do not give up in the goodness of teaching, not only as a job that pays the bill but as a work to build a better society.
I felt good when many of the teachers nod their heads in agreement with the speaker’s lines of thought. It means they can relate to it, they feel and understand what the speaker is trying to say. Also, the topic of spiritual motivation was prioritized because this was one of the top recommended topics based on the previous INSET’s evaluation. It is safe to say that many teachers in BCNHS still see the significance of spiritual motivation to their job as teachers. I felt that surge of emotion too when the speaker was sharing the positivity of teaching using real expereinces. It certainly deepened my conviction to stay in the academe which never visited my mind in my younger years.
Spiritual motivation is the fuel that drives us to go to school with energy. It fixes our mindset reminding us that we are human beings created in the goodness of God therefore there is no giving up in educating the students no matter how demanding it is. The reality may give us lots of reasons not to devote our energies to teaching like the reality of low salary, the reality of getting a heart attack or a stroke dealing in with hard-headed students, the reality that often teachers are pushed on the wrong side whenever there is conflict, but it should not fail us to believe that teaching shapes the person being taught therefore teaching shapes the world. This sounds idealistic but it is true. Spiritual motivation makes us hold on to this belief and this applies to all jobs.
Motivation often become a common topic on INSET and some teachers do not like it. Some would say they already heard those talks before. It’s the same old topic as they claim. For me, this topic never grows old or never loses significance because often times too, we lose our energy, focus, and purpose of our job due to the various challenges we encounter. Challenges, they never stop coming so we need something that keeps the fire of hope, faith, and love burning inside us –spirituality.