While many of us complain about the driver not dropping us at the best spot in front of our workplace or school, teacher Elizabeth Miranda spends 2 hours walking across remote areas and crossing 5 rivers (all without bridges!) to reach her school in Sitio Barogante, Occidental Mindoro.
Miranda has to start early or the trek would be too hot. Sunny or cloudy days are great as the walk is the least dangerous in those days but come rainy days, she has to brave the rushing waters of the rivers just to reach her students!
With the rivers having no bridges she could cross, she is forced to wade through or hire the services of the natives who bring salbabidas (life preservers) modified so she could sit inside while they swim frog style to push her across the rushing waters.
It is a sacrifice that Miranda willingly goes through each passing week just so she could teach the young minds of Sitio Barogante. The small classroom is devoid of modern gadgets and is filled with students of different ages/levels – and Miranda is their only teacher!
Her plight is heart-wrenching and she did have doubts about her capacity to continue working in this remote school yet every time she thinks about quitting, she changes her mind because she takes pity on the students who would be left without a teacher if she gives up on them. How are they going to learn? Who will guide them? How will their future be?
So, despite the hardships, Miranda continues to sacrifice her own life for the sake of these young minds. You could just imagine the state of those rivers during rainy days. What a hero! We hope her efforts will be recognized and people could somehow find a way to help her – by making bridges across these rivers, perhaps?
Watch her story via GMA’s Front Row here:
Quotes about Teachers
“The calling of the teacher. There is no craft more privileged. To awaken in another human being powers, dreams beyond one’s own; to induce in others a love for that which one loves; to make of one’s inward present their future; that is a threefold adventure like no other.” – George Steiner, Lessons of the Masters
“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.” – Sidney Hook
“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” – John Steinbeck
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” – Aristotle
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Brooks Adams