Accidental teacher

I dreamed of building skyscrapers when I was in primary grade. To create the Philippine Burj Dubai or Taipei 101, the world’s tallest structures to date. The ambition of becoming a lawyer captured my interest in high school. I enrolled Mas Communications in college. I finished Agriculture, and guess what I am now? A college teacher handling mostly English. My point? We are the ones who design the blueprints of our destiny but God alone approves.

I am an accidental teacher. I didn’t plan to be one. Years ago, I wanted to be inside a court of justice, to be engaged in a discourse against other lawyers because debates attracted me strongly, like metals to magnets. Would you believe that I went through my Bachelor’s Degree with nothing definite in mind? Right after graduation, my alma mater hired me to teach and to do research work because the President said I was good. I took the LET because a friend implored me. I leaped through my academic requirements and comprehensive examination in Master of Arts in Development Education without a specific career path. I could have been accepted at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila if only my bachelor and master’s were vertical to each other.

May of us today are accidental teachers. We didn’t plan to become one but the profession is our life now. Suffice it to say that if Popeye has Olive Oil, if a mortar has a pestle, I have teaching with me. Becoming a teacher is not measured by whether one has majored a certain field or dreamed of being a teacher since day one. Neither it is about passing the LET nor having a long list of seminars and trainings. What makes all of us teachers is the same passion that we feel when we step inside a room. The sincere intention to impart what we know. The mission to mold young people and make them exceed their abilities.

Teaching is never accidental, but we can be teachers by accident. Many of us are. I am. Cheers to the maroon and white!

Perla Rayton Jimenez teaches English at a catholic college in Nueva Ecija.

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