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MY TEACHING LIFE
Neil Romano S. Manaog
Naga Central School I
Teacher III
City of Naga

If real love is sacrifice, no profession in the whole
world would best illustrate this adage but teaching.

Yes. I must have been so inspired by this maxim
because in many ways, I have been living the principle myself.
I have been teaching in grade school for more
than a decade now, and all I can say is that teaching
is a great sacrifice, but I think the joys of teaching
are far more numerous and priceless.

I both understand and appreciate the nobility of the teaching profession.
When you teach, you educate people in wonderful ways —
including educating yourself.

A teacher’s class is the microcosm of the bigger
society where real life happens. For one, I have been teaching sports,
scouting to grade school pupils.
And they learn a lot from our bonding and partnership.
They win awards and we get to travel to places, especially
during the National Palaro. Through their own efforts
they get more exposures and experiences.
Through these experiences they get more opportunities
to explore themselves and the world. Nothing could be more
rewarding to me as a teacher than that.

When you teach, you get to touch the future too. In
other words, you are the most privileged person on
earth because you get to witness the various
sensibilities that come to your classroom, the very
picture of the future.

You are not just the fortunate witness of life, so to
speak; you can also help determine what it’s going to
be like. My third-row student right now whom I admire
for his leadership potential can very well be that
politician or business magnate who will approach me
one day to talk during their class reunion. Nothing
else could be more fulfilling than that.

But I am teacher because I am inspired by teaching
itself. I admire its nobility. I myself live the pains
it entails. There is no better proof for such
admiration than the fact that my wife—who is also a
teacher—shares these sacrifices with me. Both of us
sincerely devote our lives to teaching and teaching
with sense. Every single day, we get up early with our
kids to teach and have our kids taught in our own
schools. We believe in what education can primarily do
to our kids’ future.

We get to realize the sacrifices we have
to make for our children.
We always have to make to ends meet.

Despite our perennial financial difficulties, we
deeply realize the value of what their future can hold
for them have they been properly educated and bred, so
we try harder to sustain them with our income.
We would want to go out of this country to teach but we
believe there is time for everything. So I think
nothing could be nobler than what we’re doing because
we are our own examples of what we preach, of what we
teach. We sustain our lives with
our principles and what we believe. We live what we
believe in.

For me, teachers are not just martyrs; they are also
living saints. Every single day, they present
themselves to the world, sincerely, but for the world to ignore,
misunderstand, or even scorn. This is
enough for us to go on and remain as teachers. We
teach because we want to learn. We learn because we want to live.

I am happy I am a teacher. No other endeavor can make
a lot of sense.