counterclockwise: LET and the Liberal Teacher

The University President, Dr. Jude A. Duarte, university officials, Dayao awardees, fellow LET passers, guests, good evening.

The Dayao Awardees 2014

University President Dr. Jude A. Duarte

We were invited to this gathering because our university wanted to recognize us as LET passers. We attended because we wanted to thank the university for helping us become LET passers. This sounds a bit like television but yes, we’d like to thank our sponsors: the Lord, the source of all things, our ever supportive parents, our teachers who have prepared us in our four years in college, and most recently, the CTE Review Center, especially Dr. Marife N. Daga, who provided a lot of materials for the review, our unit heads who never abandoned us, and of course Dr. Cruzada who gave some of us, especially those who are English majors, quite an extensive rundown in the major subjects, particularly those that are the most cerebral. All of you have helped build the hype towards the LET day.

And what a day it was. A day that effectively pronounced judgment on whether the teaching profession is really for us. It all seems so long ago now especially after what happened on a certain Friday in November but I remember waking up that day and saying to myself, this is it. The exam will push through no matter how my classmates wish it would be postponed. And I remember asking myself after, now what? For several months, our lives have basically rotated around this exam and suddenly, after it, we were left without an axis, just suspended in space.

To tell you the truth, the LET is never what you expect it to be. Which makes sense when we remember the saying, Expect the unexpected. For some of us, it was overrated, and a little disappointing. After all, we are taught to consider the three domains of learning whenever we teach, and the LET has only tested us for the cognitive domain. But I realize, the affective is put to the test after, especially at the moment you are dreading to click that button and scroll down and see who passed, and the psychomotor is tested once you are actually teaching. These two domains show that there is still life beyond the LET.

But in order to look beyond, we must look back first and put the past to bed decorously, as Charles Handy said. I wanted to tell you tonight two reasons not one of this batch is a topnotcher. One reason is that we could have done better. Yes, we admit that. I admit that. The LET is a test of aptitude, but also of discipline and training. Some of our teachers used to tell us that preparing for the LET isn’t done months before; it begins the moment you enter school. All of these things build you up to face one moment, one judgment day. But we can’t soak in in months what we have seriously lacked in years, and I’m talking about Philippine education in general. I’m happy to know that the next batch is more rigorously prepared, but on the whole, this is a challenge, specifically for LNU. We have done very well in our 93 years, we can do better in the years ahead. We will do better.

Our practice teaching coordinator, Dr. Elizabeth M. Quimbo,
Gold Awardee for 30 years of good service to LNU

Which brings us to the second reason: we can do better than being a LET topnotcher. The LET has exposed a serious lack in the quality of our education, and yet this is what we became teachers for: to fill in this serious lack. I believe we chose to be in the teaching profession because although we are all selfish by nature, we fight it and try to serve others.

Clym Yeobright says in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, When the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing?, it is felt that he will not be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it… if he were making a fortune and a name, so much better for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative. I live a bum life now, but it’s a great view from here. Standing outside the ring gives you a great perspective on what is going on inside.

I, standing outside the ring, and getting to talk about it

I believe there is a reason we don’t accept perfectly reasonable, perfectly satisfactory job offers. There is a reason we do one thing, and not the other.

We are more needed in our backwoods towns. If we are going to do better, if we are going to fill in the serious lack in Philippine education, we must start at the beginning, in basic education. We must do a very fine job of building the child’s foundation so that his future teachers can do their job properly, and not do it only halfway through because he had to fill in the gaps before. And I believe if we want to, we ought to do it now, now while we are still young, now while we can still accept all that life can throw at us and not be disillusioned enough to be bitter, now while we are still strong and committed and idealistic enough to want to make a change, and to make that change. We enjoy today because all the people who are gone helped to make this day possible for us. We owe it to the next generation to make their education as good as or even better than what the previous generation gave us.

Seated are some of the faculty members of the Languages and Literature Unit,
our second home in the university

To our teachers, some of us may not have trod the path you hoped we would, but then a little detour makes a homecoming even richer, even more compelling. It took the forces of wind and sea to make us see that although we hold the steering wheels of our lives, we do not know the road. The most that we can do is to do a very good job of driving in whatever road we have under our feet. And driving well does not only involve theoretical knowledge, it requires us to get in the car, or the motorcycle, and practice. To my fellow LET passers and to all of us here tonight, let us give ourselves the gift of courage. To fathom our depths, to test how much they can hold. It is only when we have this gift that we can give it to our students, to others, to not be afraid of not treading a straight path or a smooth one, because driving on a rough and winding road teaches you a lot about driving more than driving on a straight and smooth one.

Being a good teacher is about more than having cognitive gifts, it requires affective maturity and psychomotor efficiency. We won’t have these last two if we don’t know what makes life tick, the life outside the classroom, the world outside our walls. And we will not know the answer unless we chuck the fear. Whatever road we are driving now, let us always be liberal, be open to other detours, other possibilities, so that as we move onwards, we are going to have with us the wisdom that those detours give. Let us think outside the box because why ever would be confine ourselves to the four corners of the box when there is an infinitely wider space outside? Excellence does not give space for mediocrity. Let us not be generic products of Philippine education. Let us all do better. Because the good news is, we still can. Thank you and congratulations to all of us! May God bless us all.