Try Teaching

Teaching

Do you wanna be a Doctor? A Lawyer? A Software Engineer? or even a Nurse?
How about Teaching? May I see your hands…

No takers? Why, Why, and more Why?

Being a Teacher is conceivably the Hardest, Most Underrated Job today. They are Underappreciated and Underpaid almost in every corner of the world.
What makes it worse is Teachers experience high levels of daily stress (especially in public schools in the Philippines).
The Teacher-Student ratio is ridiculously absurd. And they carry this colossal obligation on graduating their students. It’s really a very tough job!
Come to think of it, why are we paying the Educators of our Future Generations less when they do “SO MUCH”? It’s totally unfair!

And with the rise of Smart Machines, New Media Literacy, and everything being Globally Connected. You’ll see multiple new sets of skills that never existed in the past.
Bums making “Big Bucks” just by uploading videos on YouTube. Single Mom’s making a big splash in selling digital products across her country, and Senior Citizens still earning a few doughs through the “Sharing Economy”.
It makes you envision who in the right set of mind would even bother to go into teaching.

Take Jing for instance. She’s a cousin of my Mom but I treat her like my cousin because of our same age bracket.
Jing is supposed to be Lawyer but is now teaching and molding the minds of preschoolers.
Jing can easily be an Entrepreneur of some sort knowing that our clan is blessed with lands and steady connections yet she would rather get her hands dirty on the Academy’s chalk and blackboard.
Jing could travel the world, see different places and culture, still she stayed put in her hometown in Balayan Batangas and planted her roots in a school that has captured her heart for more than 10 years.

My curiosity led me to Jing’s house to precisely get accurate inputs.
In the end… Jing is not after the money, nor prestige, not even accelerate her career or put up her own school in the future.
It’s neither any of that. It just one thing…. her Passion. Her obsession with her students was the main point.

Jing’s normal working day starts first with her kissing her lovely Mom goodbye. Then she rides on her Japanese Bike and transit roughly 50 meters from her house to her school. Teach her students from morning till afternoon.
And still have an abundant time to exercise (like Running), meet her friends, and watch our local Tele-Novela prime time shows. Jing travels during the summer and surprisingly has ample time as an Educator.

I remembered asking her “Aren’t Teachers supposed to be Stressed”? “I never saw any tiny bit of it in you”.

Jing is a Teacher. And she is loving every bit of it. She has ideal working hours. She creates her own Kingdom whenever she is in her classroom.
And every day is like “Playing Day” for her and the kids.

We drastically need a lot of Jing especially here in our country.
So if you are thinking of a new career…. consider Teaching.
It’s the most rewarding job ever.
You have the power and to a greater degree, the honor to shape the minds of the youth that will one day have the big ideas that can change the world.

Written on September 28, 2018