It is said that teachers have three loves: the love of learning, the love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together.
The past months we have toiled and burned the midnight oil to conceive, enflesh, and finally deliver our Contextualized Blended Learning Program. For many of us, the endeavor was a shot in the dark and a bumpy ride and yet we have survived the threats and challenges that we have encountered along the way. And after a little more than a month of remote lesson delivery, we can confidently say that we have more than survived the challenges that the pandemic has put before us. And so today, Teachers & Staff Day, we rejoice and celebrate the efforts of each member of the community towards the end of bringing together two of our loves—learning and learners—in this time of the pandemic.
We thank and celebrate our administrators who have diligently thought through the signs and challenges of the times to conceive an appropriate plan of action that will ensure that our mission to form young leaders continues. We are also grateful for their dedicated leadership especially in moments when we encounter set-backs and discouragement.
We thank and celebrate our teachers and staff for their adaptability and commitment to carrying out our response to the Covid crisis. We thank you for the patience to upskill and reskill yourselves so that learning continues even with new modalities and platforms. We are also grateful to our non-teaching personnel who have courageously and generously accepted the challenge to teach. And we thank all the support staff who continue to silently work to ensure that the important non-academic functions of the school run smoothly.
For the celebration of World Teachers’ Day this year, the UNESCO has adopted the theme “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future”. The same theme has also been adopted by our Department of Education for the national celebration of Teachers’ Month this October. This theme reminds us of our two-fold mission of being leaders of learners and of learning in this time of crisis and of beating the path towards the next normal. Hence, as we gather and celebrate our successes in the past months, let us also continue to discern where all these events are taking us. And through the intercession of St. Ignatius of Loyola and of Our Lady of China, we pray that the Lord grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the health we need to continue to carry our mission towards the next normal.
Happy Teachers and Staff Day to all! May the good Lord bless you for your generosity and prosper the noble work to which you have committed yourselves. The Jesuits of Iloilo shall especially keep you in our prayers and masses this month.
In omnibus amare et servire,