“I beam with pride in seeing my students live good lives.”
It has been a great pleasure seeing the fruits of my teaching and mentoring – with many of my students and mentees now overtaking me in stature and knowledge. For a teacher, nothing is more satisfying than this experience of knowing that the people you taught, trained and coached are now better than you.
I do and teach, act and theorize. I keep crossing back and forth the worlds of academe, social development, law, politics, and governance. I share with my students my belief that while the real world is tough and fraught with challenges, it is possible to do good, indeed to be good – in what you do and as a human being.
I teach them skills of course – depending on the subject I am teaching – but beyond skills, I would like to think that I teach to my students an approach, an attitude to work, society, and life that will do them well later on.
I have developed a teaching methodology that encourages my students to work in teams and work collaboratively with each other to solve problems based on real-life situations. In the world today, good work is usually no longer a solitary product but a result of solidarity and collaboration.
I am able to accomplish a lot because I have many partners and co-workers who make it possible for me to do a range of things. At the core of a collaborative approach or attitude however is honesty and integrity. If you are to work collaboratively, you have to trust each other. Indeed, collaborative work requires a code of ethics based not only on intellectual honesty but also in sensitivity and respect for each other.
I am not a perfectionist. I have a high tolerance for mistakes. This is because I too am imperfect, have made many professional and personal mistakes, and know I will continue to make such mistakes. I am, as a person and as a teacher, accepting and find it easy to forgive.
I probably err on the side of giving high grades for my students. I would have no problem forgiving a student who plagiarizes a paper or who cheats in an exam so long as there is admission and contrition. There also needs to be an acceptance of some kind of appropriate penalty. Overall, I give high grades, including quite a lot of 1s, 4s, 100s, and As. Students have to work hard to fail in my classes. I motivate students well so thankfully I do not fail many students.
For the issues I care about – protecting the environment, promoting indigenous people rights, achieving environmental, climate, and social justice, fighting social inequality, advocating human rights, ensuring permanent peace in Mindanao and our country, and achieving a just and well-governed society – teaching is the most effective way to make a difference.
These are huge issues, large problems, and almost insurmountable challenges. These battles cannot be won in a generation. We must outrun them, go far ahead of the problems, and find effective solutions early so that they do not repeat themselves in the future.
All these problems need a new generation of leaders, scientists, lawyers, social entrepreneurs, and activists. That is why I teach – so I can help foster and support such a generation, a new community of changemakers.
The pandemic has been a mixed experience for teaching. In a way, the experiences of the pandemic are teaching my students directly and all I need to do is to facilitate their learning. But the burdens of studying and teaching virtually are real. Indeed, teaching and studying in a pandemic is teaching and studying under wartime conditions.
Even after 41 years of teaching, I am still nervous when, at the beginning of a semester or course, I meet my students for the first time. I still worry whether I will be a good teacher to this class, whether I can deliver to them the skills and values I want to impart.
At the end of the semester or course, I still shout for joy when I realize, from their exam answers or from private messages they send to me, that my students have truly learned and they will be/are better professionals and persons because of it. And I do jump, yes literally jump, for joy when I see former students, many years later, living what I have taught them.
I do not of course take credit for what they accomplish and what they have become. But I have to say that I beam with pride in seeing my students live good lives. Those moments are really the joy of teaching.
Whenever someone asks me, during speaking engagements, how I would like to be introduced, the standard phrases I suggest are: “Teacher, thinker, lawyer, social entrepreneur, and good governance, social entrepreneur, human rights and environmental justice advocate”. But if they press me to choose only one; without hesitation, quickly and with conviction, I would choose, “teacher”. It is a title I hope I will always deserve.
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