Barely a month ago the university where I am connected was celebrating its ’Teacher’s Day’, it started with a Eucharistic celebration follows with a different presentations both from the teachers and the students. It was really a meaningful day for each and everyone, a bit touching, shall I say.

We are all aware that ‘teaching is a noble profession’. They are called to educate and develop the children/students to their fullest potentials. These commitments are to remind them that they are here to serve these children/students.

1. Encourage the parents to bring children to school.   

2. Teach the children with respect and compassion.

3. Learn how to communicate with them properly.   

4. Provide right materials for them.

5. Accept and welcome them whatever, whoever they may be.                          

6. Attend seminars to update your knowledge and teaching skills.

7. Help them to socialize.                                         

8. Keep in mind: children cannot wait. Children need education now. 

I have here at least 10 Rules for Teachers to live by:

1.  Make a specific rule and post them.

2.  Use rewards that are meaningful to the students.

3.  Give feedback often.

4.  Help the students to anticipate and to plan for their work.

5.  Understand the moods of the students (they have good and bad days).

6.  Use praise often.

7.  Keep in mind that children with special needs are biological in nature.

8.  Be patient.

9.  Respond by showing.

10.Have a big sense of humor.

These things wouldn’t be meaningful if teachers don’t have any inspirations from God. They must ask guidance and enlightenment from the Holy Spirit for them to keep going.

Teacher’s Prayer (By: Joanna Fuchs)

Dear Lord,  Bless these teachers mightily as they seek to teach, enrich and guide your precious children. Grant these teachers abundant resources to do their job. Give them intelligence, wisdom, sensitivity, and kindness. Provide them with the tools to be creative and productive in handling with those children.

Lord, wrap your loving arms around these teachers who give so much of themselves to develop our youth into creative, responsible adults. We pray that You will immerse them in your boundless, transcendent love.

We pray that You will strengthen and soothe them when they have given so much of themselves that they need Your extra attention, Your extra care. We love, respect and admire these teachers, Lord and we pray that You will watch over them always - these special people who hold our children and our future in their hands. AMEN.

One day, a small opening appeared in a cocoon; a man sat and watched for the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then, it seems to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could not go any further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly: he took a pair of scissors and opened the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a withered body, it was tiny and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand, to be able to support the butterfly’s body and become firm.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a withered body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. What the man, in his kindness and his goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes, struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been. Never been able to fly.

I asked for STRENGTH. . . and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for WISDOM . . . and God gave me problems to solve. I asked for PROSPERITY. . . and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for COURAGE. . . and God gave me obstacles to overcome. I asked for LOVE. . . and God gave me troubled people to help. I asked for FAVORS . . . and God gave me Opportunities.

“I received nothing I wanted. . . But I received EVERYTHING I needed.”

An experienced mental chemist could analyze a person’s character, even if a stranger, and tell what discordant thought or vicious ideal is casting its fatal shadow upon his personality. (I’ve learned this when I had a nice chat with a psychologist friend).

Things have just the power over us with which we endow them. That which strikes terror to ones person’s heart and paralyzes his efficiency may not cause another even to wince. I know a few persons who have so trained their thought that they allow nothing to shake them from their center.

One, for example, has lost all his property, all his family, and he is left alone in the world a poor and homeless old man. Yet no one can ever detect a tremor of complaint or a weakness anywhere in his nature, simply because he has so completely learned the “science of right thinking” that he can shut out of his mind or neutralize with its mental antidote anything which would cause him pain or injury. He neutralizes discord with harmony, error with truth.

He has become such an adept at mental chemistry that the very moment he is touched with the poison of hatred and jealousy, he antidotes it with love, the spirit of good-will. The shafts of malice and envy can not get near him. He looks upon these things as no part of the truth of his being.

When you are suffering from fear or worry, you may be sure you have endowed something with this power over you, otherwise it could not have gained such a hold. The very fact that you fear, it shows that you have established between it and yourself a relation which you could break if you only knew how to apply your mental chemistry.

I’ve learned so much from this friend of mind his ideas are very informative that at that very moment I came to realized that whenever we are unhappy, distressed, “blue,” worried, it is due to some mental poison, which ought to be as easy to antidote as it is to destroy fire with water.

The outrage over the racist slur against Filipino medical professionals in the ABC hit show “Desperate Housewives,” has led to an online petition circulated worldwide–calls for a boycott of all ABC shows, demands for an apology and a rewrite of the script, and a diplomatic complaint.

And rightly so, after all, Filipino medical workers are in demand all over the world to include the United States.

Similarly, foreigners have been coming to the Philippines, not only for medical studies, but also to obtain first world medical services at third world prices. I had this foreigner acquaintance who took a medical course here. After he had finished the course and passed the board exam he flew back to the US for specialization in cosmetic surgery. He told me that he wishes to become and be part of the team of surgeons in plastic surgery in Indianapolis . . . Good luck to you Joe!

Around November & December - the holiday season - balikbayan boxes are packed with motley confections and chocolates, particularly those that are not available in the country, it’s a habit among Filipinos abroad - buying stuff not usually found in the Philippines.

I’ve seen countless faces light up when they see the gifts from their loved ones in the US. They feel that Santa Claus delivers loads of goodies specially picked out by Filipinos living abroad, for their loved ones back home.

A week ago my mother-in-law, sent me an email from Chicago informing me that she have this desire to share the good things they have with her “apos” (grandchildren) here. Among the lucky recipients of such generous tidings is my daughter Bea. The boxes we are going to receive from mom are a treasure trove of tattoo symbols, which Bea has been dreaming to have. Mom thought that sending imported designs of tattoos is almost tantamount to giving her apos back home a taste of their lives abroad.