Last year, I opted to transfer to the public school system after 25 years of teaching in private schools/universities. The pay is lower because I was made to believe that I’d get a Master Teacher 4 (MT4) rank given my qualifications but I was told, after passing the recruitment process, that only a MT1 item is available and truth is that there rarely is a MT4. Anyway, I just consoled myself with the fact that the school is one short ride away from my place which gave me back the precious three hours I wasted commuting to and from work for the past 13 years. I am now in my second year of being a public school teacher handling senior high school classes.

I was warned by the Principal that I’d get culture-shocked but I am not alien to the public school system as I was a product of an elementary and a university education. I know that one cannot expect much for facilities and a teacher usually spends for her instructional materials. After all, the Filipino public school teacher has been embarrassingly among the lowest paid professionals for years. It was only in the past two administrations that the salaries and benefits of the public school pedagogues have met some welcome upgrade. Nowadays, most public school teachers earn more than their counterparts in the private schools. Also, the public school teacher renders only six hours of work to the usual eight hours of the rest of workforce. So where does “oppression” come in?

The teacher is perhaps one of the very few professionals who bring her work home. It is good that reporting time for public school teachers has been reduced to six hours because the other two hours are devoted to the preparation of lessons and materials. But if you are given three different subjects to teach, not all of them within your area of major or minor expertise, two hours of preparation are not enough. So the preparation time naturally eats up on your other life which usually is family life. Despite this, teaching is still, for me, the most convenient profession for a family person.

Another form of “oppression” is the tendency of public school admins to require tasks compliance the day before or even on the day of its deadline. Apparently, the Department of Education – suffering from its sheer size as a department that communicates orders, memos, and task deadlines – is very difficult and is usually delayed. The negative effect of these delays is the formation of a culture of mediocrity. Many teachers submit to the mediocrity just to comply. Some admin people in the schools encourage or rely on this ongoing mediocrity so that they can tick off delayed tasks from their own list of follow-ups.

One other oppressive practice is disrupting classes because of a “VIP” visit. Students must clean up their work space; teachers forego lessons in anticipation of a visitor, who more often than not, doesn’t even care to walk to the building where the disruption of classes was done in his/her honor. It is also not uncommon for an immediate superior to interrupt a lesson by asking a teacher to send a student to pick up trash or sweep the hallways.

Another disruptive practice is summoning teachers to seminars and trainings in the middle of the term thus sacrificing precious classroom hours. This on top of the many activities lined up (planned or on short notice) that take the teacher away from her class. The teacher attends to all these and is expected to finish her lessons based on the curriculum guide. The teacher might benefit from the time away from the classroom in some hotel or resort (the DepEd has at least upgraded its treatment of the teacher by giving her better food and accommodations during training) but she will be stressed by the backlog she has waiting for her upon return.

These and many other reasons can make the teacher “mababaw” in terms of things that make her happy on the job. The salary, despite the increase given via the salary standardization being implemented, remains low compared with those of other professionals. What will make teachers smile will be news (that quickly spread on the group chats) of extra cash available in their Land Bank accounts because of year-end bonuses, PBB, PEI, chalk allowance, clothing allowance, COLA or research incentive to name some. These aren’t exactly huge amounts but enough to cheer up the pedagogue who’s been used to getting trickles from government and society, monetary and otherwise.#