SIX of the nominees in the search for the 2015 Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines (TOSP), Region 7 want to be teachers.
Such a welcome development, especially because they graduated with Latin honors, and are outstanding student leaders. Totally gone, I hope, is the old mentality of parents who pushed their children into education degrees, despite mediocre grades, because “pobre man kita.”
Two of the nominees took mathematics for their majors, and are raring to rub off on their pupils their enjoyment of the field. “Mathematics is fun, really fun; students should not be afraid of it,” they said.
As a youth, my father found math challenging. Seeing how his classmates feared it, he decided to master the subject and did so with flying colors.
Such sense of challenge and adventure sometimes skips a generation, meaning me. Math was overwhelming, even terrifying. I believe that when my math teachers deliberated on their grades for me, the good Lord must have reminded them it was better to err in kindness.
But I loved English and so, chose it for my college major. I always had this love affair with words, so that each new word learned was a “Eureka” moment.
Because I loved English, I wanted to enthuse my students as well. Business lingo now calls it “passion.” I found my passion in high school and pursued it in college.
My parents shared a passion for teaching, and permanently rubbed this off on me. Its first cousin --- training --- was thus easy to embrace.
So, my last day will probably see me with my boots on---teaching, training and mentoring.
Former students jumpstarted my involvements in other fields. The late Socorro “Cherry” Muntuerto, a Theresian, started me off in my training career. Ma. Linda “Mylene” Evangelista of UP Cebu College showed me how the intricacies of BPO operations can impact time-held HR practices.
Media involvements came accidentally. First was the print medium, casually brokered by my former student at St. Theresa’s College, Concepcion “Mayek” Briones-Kuhn.
Her mother, the “grand dame of Cebu journalism” Concepcion G. Briones, needed an op-ed column for the erstwhile “The Visayas Observer,” circulated in Visayas and Mindanao.
Mayek referred me to her mother and thus in 1980 my column writing began. “Mommy Conching” became my mentor. When Visayas Observer folded up, she brought me along to The Freeman and then Sun.Star Daily (now Sun.Star Cebu).
Dabbling in the radio was also accidental. Former student Caesar “Johnny Kawa” Ditan, UP Cebu alumnus, was then Y101 station manager. He needed a newscaster that very week he was leaving for the US.
What started as a month-long stint in Y101 in 1983 eventually extended to twelve years until 2005, with television news casting and public affairs hosting in People’s Television 11 thrown in.
If the six TOSP nominees pursue their passion for teaching, they will touch lives of their students. Some will even transform their fear of, into love of, math.
And with some stroke of luck, they might also be gifted with former students who show them how to chase butterflies in open gardens. The world is awash with opportunities just waiting to be discovered and savored.
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)