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I woke up early on a Saturday morning with TV and games on my mind. They were all my five-year-old self could really care about back then. Walking about the house, I saw we had a visitor—a familiar face.
He was the student my mother had been coaching for a competition called DaMath. They already won in the district and division levels and now they were on their way to regionals. I recalled it would be later the following week. He joined us for meals and he and my mom played the game a lot for most of the day. Even my dad was involved, leaving me to play with my childhood games by myself.
My mother was a dedicated school teacher all her professional life. Growing up, I could attest to how dedicated she was to her profession. I was no stranger to welcoming her students or colleagues into the house for a bit of her time. It didn’t happen that often since we lived relatively far from the school, but I was aware even at that young age that my mother was important, not just to my family, but to these people as well.
My sister and I would sometimes go with our mom to school and we’d see students greet her cheerfully. Some would even stay after their classes to hang out or play in my mother’s classroom. I became friends with a few of them and they’d let me play without consequences (perks of being the smallest lol). We were treated well—with kindness, respect, and affection. That was my mother’s environment which I grew up in.
On Competing with Students
It wasn’t always fun and cheerful though. Educating was a tedious job. There were days when she’d spend late nights preparing lessons plans or checking school work or just generally preparing materials for her class. There were even weekends when she would ask me to help her out with her presentation materials or with the new design on her classroom bulletin board.
My mother didn’t mind all of these. She had a job and she was passionate in doing it. Her school and her students loved her for doing so. I’m not proud of it, but I have to admit that, at times, I got jealous of her students when I was younger. I felt like I was sharing my mother with 30 or more children and it wasn’t fair. Even when it came to Valentine and Christmas cards, I had to compete with the best ones she received from her class. I never really told my mom this, so I don’t know if she knew.
It wasn’t long before that jealousy left me though. I grew up, yes, but it was mostly because my mom never really gave me reasons to stay that way. It’s true I was sharing her time with other children but that didn’t mean it was bad. She was a teacher to these children in school, but she was a teacher, friend, playmate, and a mother to my sister and me.
Not Your Ordinary Day Job
I discovered teaching isn’t a regular day job. You don’t simply show up at work at 8am and leave by 5pm. It just isn’t so. You go to school mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to educate. Young minds look to you to learn, not just mathematics or history, but life lessons as well, even in the subtlest of ways.
During weekends, we would always go to town either for a trip to the grocery or to attend mass or to just eat out with the family. Once or twice, we would accidentally bump into one of my mother’s old students. They would stop for a while and talk. It has always marveled me how they still remember her, and do so fondly. She must have done something good for people to come running to her in the middle of a busy grocery store just to say hello.
Twenty-three years later, I would still get random social media messages from people introducing themselves as my mother’s former students. They would go on to ask how my mom is doing these days and share little anecdotes of being in her class. Sometimes I’d even get messages as sincere as thanking my mother for the inspiration and acceptance they felt during the time they spent in her class. My mother doesn’t have any social media account so they let their messages reach her through my sister and me instead.
These make me smile. She’s my mother! Her kindness has always been inspiring at home, but hearing comments from her former students makes a whole lot of difference. I was never her student in school, but she has always been my teacher—from my first ABCs to the first dish I cooked, to which medicine to take, to my beliefs in life, to the kindness I ought to show despite how cruel the world can be sometimes.
I never personally experienced learning the lessons her students did from her, but I had and have so much more: someone willing to teach in and out of school. And I call her “mom.”
Almira Manduriao does content marketing by profession, works with nonprofits and social enterprises to strengthen their cause, and advocates for the protection of women & children in the country. She travels to collect local paintings, eat whatever’s on the menu, and get lost in crowded train stations.
