Why do public school teachers clamor for an increase in their salaries?
One of the reasons is the ever-increasing prices of petroleum products, public transport, basic necessities and prime commodities, and other goods and services.
Unlike other government workers, teachers don’t stop working once they leave their classrooms. Instead, they prepare lesson plans, visual aids, classroom devices, reports, and other seemingly endless paperwork.
I know it because both of my parents were public school teachers. As I grew up, I saw all their sacrifices and hardships as teachers. Forty years of teaching must have been tiring, so I’m happy that they are now retired.
When my parents were still teaching, they told me a story about one of their co-teachers whose monthly take-home pay only amounts to P3,000 due to numerous loan deductions from his salary.
My father used to tell us, his children, that there will be no doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professions had it not been for teachers.
Thus, teachers deserve a higher salary because they groom the students into successful individuals.
If their salaries will be increased, then they won’t have to leave the country for greener pastures abroad and they won’t have to borrow money from various lending institutions anymore. – Leonard Kristian Mesa Gelacio, Cauayan City, Isabela