3 lessons I learned from my teacher-engineer mom

MANILA, Philippines — They say our parents are usually our first teachers. Lucky for me, my mom actually is one.

My mother was a teacher (or still is… I mean, one may retire, but do they ever really stop teaching?).

It was a running joke in the family that her dad, my lolo, did everything he could to stop my mom from becoming one.

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Teaching is one of the most fulfilling and noble professions. The better you are at it, the more demanding the job becomes.

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So Tatay Lito encouraged Mommy Jeng Pechay to study engineering, and my mom, the obedient child she was, did so.

She later became a licensed electronics and communications engineer.

But I guess life has a funny way of putting you where you’re supposed to be.

Which brings me to lesson number one: When your passion runs deep, it radiates and becomes who you are.

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READ: ‘Forced’ to be a teacher and yet…

And when you’re at it, you’ll bloom and flourish, ever so fully.

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When my mother graduated and passed the boards, she worked as an engineer locally and in Taiwan.

But the pull of teaching was so strong, she couldn’t simply resist. So she took units in education and eventually taught computer classes in secondary school.

She later taught engineering subjects in college and eventually became the Officer in Charge-Dean of the College of Technology, becoming the youngest among the department heads at the City of Malabon University.

I would sometimes come into her office and watch her work. I would draw and paint at her table while she worked on her computer, finding the most optimal way to make every class schedule work for the IT students and faculty.

When she finished, it meant that no teacher would have to come in at 7 a.m., teach a two-hour class, wait eight hours with nothing on their schedule, and then teach again at 5 p.m. It meant that an irregular or working student would not be inconvenienced by scheduling difficulties.

But for me, her finishing simply meant we could finally go to the canteen and drink our fresh mango shakes.

I also remember peeking into her meetings with the IT faculty, where I often heard her encouraging them to be the best they could be, even if that simply meant something as little as keeping their class records clean.

Ma’am Pech, as her students and faculty called her, was well-loved for her efficiency, her people-first leadership, her “no politics” fairness and, above all, how genuinely she cared.

Mom Pech, meanwhile, supported us in whatever we chose to pursue in life.

She told us words have power, leaving notes for me and my brother just to remind us how our mindset dictates the way we lead our lives and to use words responsibly and lovingly.

“I want it. I know it. I can do it,” she would often urge us to say whenever faced with something nerve-wracking.

Which is probably why, at a young age, I grew accustomed to words; to using them to show I care.

Then came lesson number two: One can be gentle and still stand her ground.

Despite facing her class with firmness and conviction, Ma’am Pech was not one to shout in class.

My Tita Angie, Mom’s younger sister, who eventually became her student, said Mom was someone to watch.

“Oo, kahit mga kaklase kong loko-loko, napapasunod niyan. Bilib nga ako sa mommy mo, siya lang nakapagpasunod sa mga yun,” Tita Angie would often recall.

(Yes, even my rowdy classmates would listen to her. I really admired your mom. She was the only one who could get them to listen.)

I would often wonder how she did it. Until I realized, as I grew up, that she simply saw people as people, regardless of rank.

I am not sure if it was her introverted personality, but she never forced a smile or a handshake just to please someone of rank. She was respectful, always, but not pretentious.

She didn’t care much for positions. She just was herself.

She disagreed when needed, especially when people were disadvantaged.

As Mom Pech, though, she taught my brother and me that we are nothing without our principles.

READ: A teacher’s turn

And perhaps that’s one of the biggest things I learned from her: You can be kind without being a pushover. You can be humble without making yourself small.

“Fair is fair!” she would often say, like in the movie The Legend of Billie Jean.

I saw her choose what was right, even when it wasn’t necessarily convenient. I saw her stand by her people, and oppose them when it was what was right.

Lesson number three: There is always a positive side to any situation if we choose to find it.

As I doodled and painted at Ma’am Pech’s desk, this was a quote I would often read.

It stuck with me, perhaps because a part of me disagreed.

Because sometimes, I think, there are things that just don’t make sense, things that hurt, things that you don’t immediately know how to turn into something good.

But both Ma’am Pech and Mom Pech seemed to have a way of looking at life differently.

Maybe finding the positive doesn’t mean pretending that everything is okay.

Maybe it means choosing to believe that there is still something worth holding on to, even when things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to.

My mother didn’t get to spend her entire life in the classroom. She had to leave a career she loved to raise us. The city girl became a probinsyana when our family decided to move to Batangas.

There, she had no clerks at her disposal. No more faculty to meet. No class schedules to arrange to make sure it was convenient for everyone.

And yet, when I asked her if she ever regretted it, she smiled and said no.

Perhaps that was her way of living out the very lesson she had left behind on her desk.

She found the good in what life gave her. And maybe, without realizing it, we were the good she found.

I suppose that’s what I learned from my teacher mom.

That passion will find you.

That kindness and principles can coexist.

And that sometimes, the best thing you can do with the life you’re given is choose to see the good in it.

Ma’am Pech may have left the classroom years ago, but I don’t think she ever really stopped teaching.

She’s just been teaching us ever since, this time as Mom Pech. And I think, in many ways, my brother Jeh and I are also her students.

This is one course in life we’ll try hard not to graduate from.

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This Teacher’s Day and the next, I hope we find time to thank our teachers, mentors, or anyone who has lent us a guiding hand. /mcm