MONA LISA SMILE: Teachers of solicitude and apathy

Ask yourself: just how many teachers scold you to shut up and try to learn something from his/her class?



Or, just how many of them treat you like a son/daughter, as they would occasionally ask how are you holding up at school or at your chaotic home?



Have we ever asked ourselves, why EXACTLY, are my teachers (annoyingly like my mother) always have that long criticizing speech that spoils the rest of my adolescent life?



We have obviously forgotten that technically school is our orphanage home (in an educational way of course) and teachers are our stepmothers/fathers. That should mean they also want what's best for us students, and I do believe they would care less and quit scolding us and ruining their days if they don't actually care.

I have encountered many teachers always reprimanding me for not attending my classes and scolding me for irresponsibly catching up with missed activities (I was a member of the Extra Curricular Activities AWOL group). I should have felt really bad, but thankfully I was refined by my journalism teacher Ms. Josephine Bonsol to simply think the other way around, saying I should be grateful enough for such teachers because in the least they cared about my academics and even my future. If they didn't, they would've simply not cared.



I've also been aware of the two classifications of teachers, especially in public schools: the first group who ardently teach and hone and scold students to make them better citizens of the country, and the other one simply trying to show they teach, objectively because it's their job, period.



With this perspective in mind, I've learned to appreciate and idolize our so-called "verbal-abusing" but unquestionably virtuous teachers, thinking they are simply concerned about me, and any one of us for that matter. One teacher once said to me: "Boy, am I glad you're back in classes. Next time try not to miss activities just so to do something good for the school. Do something for yourselves and for your future." And that's just how lucky I am enough to have a lot of surrogate moms in school.



But then these days this youth generation tends to worship the culture of misunderstanding everything including teachers. The case of a student stabbing a teacher to death (who was simply scolding him to get a proper haircut) already proved it. I've also read first year hs students commenting they salute the boy and might have done the same thing.

Maybe it's because we students don't want to be dictated and be outsmarted by other people. We feel superior as if we know everything where in fact we always waste time gossiping about completely senseless topics on whereabouts of others, including teachers. It is but true of Padre Fernandez's notion of students backstabbing teachers; of course we can't say it out loud. (He was the good pastor in Rizal's El Filibusterismo)



Bad words? Insults? Embarrassing affronts like "Ang bobo mo!" or "Mag-drop-out ka na lang!" replaying in our ears, I was told, are meant for us students to be challenged, and to some extent, to fairly hate our teachers while we promise ourselves we will prove to them our worth.



Thinking they're bringing us down or making our high school days the worst in our lives simply makes us the ONES who drag ourselves down. I've been taught that life is what we make it, and if we put optimistic perspectives in everything we see and encounter everyday, we will definitely make ourselves a big favor.



For all the teachers who adopted me and scolded me for always going AWOL in class, THANK YOU!