First time

By: Guia Trinidad (Contributor, Manila Bulletin)
June 30, 2010, 11:44am

Teaching may be the most challenging of professions, but it is also the most noble and fulfilling of all. No task is harder than to mold a generation to be responsible and useful citizens of the country.

Yet, amid the difficulties, the relatively low pay, and – in the case of teachers in the far-flung areas of Mindanao – the danger, many opt to pursue this vocation.

In the most recent licensure examination for teachers, more than 50,000 Education graduates took the exam. Only 11,318 teachers passed.

Meet this year’s new batch of teachers – idealistic, enthusiastic and all armed with the same goal – to make a difference in the lives of their students.

Small but terribly driven

First-time teacher Rachel Valencia may be small in height, but definitely not in might.

Petite and wet behind the ears as far as teaching is concerned, the 21-year-old freshly grad is all geared up to reach out to her students.

Standing at 4 feet and 11 inches tall, Rachel is shorter than most of her high school students at Ann Arbor High School in Parañaque City. Nonetheless, she makes sure that her students know who is boss!

Besides adjusting to her new role inside the classroom, Rachel also has to prepare for the subjects that she is teaching for the first time – Economics, Philippine History and Government, as well as World and Asian History. She even sought advice from her former teachers (now her co-teachers), and had been updating herself about the current events in and out of the country.

Since she is the fourth teacher in her family, Rachel also gets some tips from the other educators in the brood as to how to maintain a classroom environment conducive for learning.

To make History fun and easy, for instance, she would transform each lesson into an itinerary. “It would be more of a travel rather than lectures which tend to be boring,” she shares.

As much as possible, she would want her classroom to be enveloped with laughter since she believes that learning is fun. “I told my students that I want an environment where we are all friends, but of course they should not forget that I am still their teacher,” she stresses.

Rachel is very excited about various activities in school like the Junior-Senior prom, field trips, retreats and intramurals. “Those things were the first to come in my mind when I received the news that I got the post, and just merely imagining those events already made me all giddy,” the bubbly teacher reveals.