I was recently scandalized by two other people before who made awful well-meaning jokes about not being able to earn off teaching. I knew that teaching would not pay as well as corporate, and it won’t allow me to be a stereotypical millennial by way of traveling wherever or buying really nice things, but it would at least keep the roof over my head and food on the table.
It took over a year to get me to the pay grade competitive to my previous corporate jobs, but for the most part it was something I was willing to bear with. For lack of an MA or a LET, that would do…for now, anyway.
It’s ironic that teachers aren’t paid a lot when it costs so much to get an education nowadays. I can’t imagine paying to send someone to school with what I earn now. I can go on and on about my own social and political philosophies, but that’s an entry for another day with proper citations. In the end as well, philosophy can only go so far.
I just know that I have better things to do than make rich people richer, or to take orders from behind a desk. Even with the realities of of adult debt, I want to do more than my job.
So for the summer at volunteered to teach English at Young Focus, an NGO that helps in-need children of Tondo, Metro Manila. We could only achieve so much in about 4.5 hours together over a span of a month, but at the end of the day – they did it! They were given a place to make mistakes, were corrected with respect, and reminded to think beyond their own limits. In about 4.5 hours worth of lessons they made their own study plan for the language, stories, and were able to talk about themselves and the people they just met.
This is something that I hope will be a regular thing for all of us. I can hope that it won’t end there, and they keep at it. For now at least, they have an idea on how to do so. In the best case scenario, it’s something they’ll be able to pass on in the future.