Why I teach

(Editor’s Note: We want to encourage more teachers to write, especially those who teach writing. Tell us why you teach in an essay written in English and not exceeding 5,000 characters.

E-mail to [email protected] or send on a CD to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 1098 Chino Roces Avenue corner Yague and Mascardo Streets, Makati City 1204, Attention: Learning.)

Galamgam

Displayed in one corner of my lime-green wall is a printed copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Rhodora.”

Twice a day, my eyes are drawn to the lines without reading them with understanding or taking them to heart.

Then one lunch break, one of my pupil-writers approached me and said, “Sir, teachers are like the Rhodora.” I put my pen down and looked in awe at my pupil, who quickly rejoined her friends.

The room was filled with a deafening silence, my pupils taking their noise outside.

What my student said rang in my ears. I took down the poem and read it closely.

“The Rhodora”

On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

I closed my eyes after reading Emerson’s poem. My pupil’s observation echoed in my mind. I realized that she was correct. Teachers are like the Rhodora.

Emerson wrote that God created beautiful things even if no one ever saw them.

Teachers are like the Rhodora, unsung heroes, sometimes unseen and unappreciated.

Not many people know that we wake up every day thinking about what to offer our learners and go to bed with the same thought in mind.

Exerting a lot of effort to finish a task, fighting off drowsiness to beat deadlines, spending our own hard-earned money for class projects and multitasking, among other things, are sacrifices that, like the Rhodora, remain unnoticed.

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Teachers bloom even in dark hours and serve as light in troubled times. With our involvement in various civic activities, we contribute to bringing our society back to being a clear river of flowing dreams.

Our system is admittedly polluted. But we teachers dip our inspiring petals in the water to turn it blue once again.

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

The red bird is the learner who seeks the embrace of a teacher to help him/her achieve a bright future, choose the right path, develop his/her potential and understand the world.

Through the Rhodora, Emerson seemed to have discovered the answer to one of life’s most important questions: Why are we here on Earth?

Teachers have found our purpose here on Earth, the three L’s: loving, learning, living.

Loving. Our love for our learners makes us love our craft. In teaching the children, we help develop future nation builders.

Learning. Teachers learn though interaction with our pupils. We are touched by the everyday stories of the young people we teach. We learn more about ourselves to become better knowledge providers. As teachers mold young minds, we also are molded by them.

Living. Teaching is life. Teaching provides life. Every end of the school year is a life provided to learners, a life developed and inspired. For the teacher, it means a life well-lived as an agent of change for pupils and the whole community.

The search for the meaning of life drives us. It wakes us up each day with the urge to “find ourselves.”

As teachers, may we always be inspired to find ourselves in the life of others and lead them to a better world. Let us be like the Rhodora, spreading our leafless blooms to brighten up other people’s lives.

Lhoyd Bryan Galamgam is a fifth-grade teacher at Malingeb Elementary School in Bantay town, Ilocos Sur province.