Teachers are liberators for better opportunities, lives: Kiko

A big, heartfelt salute to the Filipino teachers in the country and abroad on World Teachers' Day!

Teachers are our second parents, role models, and cheerleaders. Teachers shape us to have a lifetime hunger for knowledge and excellence. Teachers inspire values for compassion, integrity, hard work, and commitment. Like soldiers, public school teachers may be assigned anywhere, sometimes putting their lives at risk.

On World Teachers' Day, we wish our teachers better lives now than we last met them.

Do some still sell various items to augment their income? Do they still use money from their own pockets to buy chalk and other school supplies? Are they still victims of exploitative credit and lending institutions?

It used to be that being in a teaching profession symbolizes living well. No longer.

Teachers receive meager income, and they cope with this meagerness to sustain their needs. Through the years, a teacher's heart for sacrifice may have grown tired, further aggravated by long work hours, congested classrooms, lack of textbook and school supplies, and substandard facilities.

It's high time this government make good on its commitment to uplift the status of teachers toward quality education.

Let's free them up from non-teaching duties; hire more teaching and non-teaching personnel; allow them access to free medical and dental services; and, increase their salary to decent levels.

Teachers are among those in the frontline of providing services to the Filipino people. With education, they help liberate. Good education eventually leads to greater opportunities and chances of attaining a better life. But when will the teachers themselves be liberated from poverty?