Press Release
October 1, 2019

Co-Sponsorship Speech: National Teachers' Month
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri
1 October 2019

This October 5, the National Teachers' Month will be coming to a close. But although this month of appreciation will end, the work of a teacher never will.Consider, Mr. President, the demands on a teacher: for hours on end, they have to access immense reserves of energy in order to engage huge groups of students, and then they are obliged to devote most of their free time to crafting lesson plans, checking papers, preparing for parent-teacher reports, attending seminars, and supervising students' extracurricular activities, among others. Not to mention, teachers have to constantly see to the up-keeping of their own education, to remain ahead of the curve and ensure that their curricula and their teaching methods are up to date in this increasingly technological world.

Apart from all of that, teachers have to expend great amounts of emotional labor in order to fulfil the unwritten duty of being second parents to tens, even hundreds of students on a daily basis. They have to be sensitive to the individual needs of their students, while keeping the group's learning pace moving. They may even have to help their students with problems that stem from turbulent home lives and bleed into their academic performance.

This National Teachers' Month is a recognition of all that work, inside and outside the classroom. But a month is hardly enough recognition, given how the teaching profession demands full devotion. One does not just work as a teacher--one is a teacher, day in and day out.

As such, before this month of appreciation comes to an end, I would like to reaffirm our commitment to our teachers and promise that we will work hard to institutionalize the pay increase of our basic education teachers this 18th Congress. In this way, even long after the National Teachers' Month is over, we can continue to thank our teachers by giving them the compensation that they rightfully deserve.

Maraming salamat, at mabuhay ang ating mga guro!

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