Commencement and fulfillment at journey’s end
CAPILLAS
While the Jollibee online wedding commercial shown in YouTube drew kudos and shed a few tears among the “hugot” audience in time for Valentine’s Day last month, it was McDonald’s turn to tug at the heartstrings of netizens with their “Good Morning Teacher!” online commercial this month of March which also happens to be graduation month in most schools in the country.
To those who haven’t seen it, the commercial featured Mrs. Luzviminda Santiago, a teacher of Makati City National High School who is scheduled to retire in July this year.
It detailed her own experience as a teacher, of how she had to wake up at 4 a.m. for the past 30 years to travel some distance to her school and how, despite the difficulties of her job, she would miss it once she retires in the next four months.
Along with her own account are personal stories of some of her former students who recounted how she was so strict and proper, yet was willing to help them out and even give them fare so they wouldn’t miss her class.
Two of her students mentioned how she was the mother they didn’t have while one of them recalled her advice to study well, so they can achieve anything they want in life.
“I feel sad now that I’m retiring. The school, my class, they are my second family. This had become my home. I always ask myself — What now? I won’t have students to talk to anymore. No more students greeting me. Really I love them, I love my students so much,” an emotional Mrs. Santiago said in Filipino, before she is shown entering a classroom and being greeted “Good Morning!” by her former students.
Cue in the scenes showing her students paying tribute to her and Mrs. Santiago happily sharing a breakfast meal with them (courtesy of McDonald’s of course) and the commercial moves to its conclusion with close-up shots of her students and their eventual career choices along with Mrs. Santiago’s voice-over message in Filipino: “There is fulfillment in teaching. You know you played a role in what they’ve become. It’s so fulfilling. I’m really going to miss this.”
At a time when graduation month had been focused on students celebrating the end of their journey in school and either stepping up to higher education or going job hunting, it’s also nice to look at the other side of the classroom and see how the teachers do feel once school season ends.
For some it may be the break they need and for others scheduled for retirement like Mrs. Santiago, it is not just the end of a long career but also a farewell to what they considered to be a “second family,” their students whom they treat like their own children.
Yet at the back of their mind and in their heart of hearts, they know that they’ve done their job the best they know how and as in Mrs. Santiago’s case, being blessed with meeting their students again after so many years and being reminded by them of how she had taught them well.
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After viewing it on YouTube, I was directed to another McDonald’s commercial that appeared two years ago about the “homeless boy” whose photo of him studying under the light of a McDonald’s outlet in Mandaue City went viral on social media and sparked a slew of queries and offers of help from people all over the world.
I’m guessing that Daniel Cabrera, who’s nine years old when the photo of him surfaced in Facebook, must be doing at least good by now. To be sure, we don’t lack for stories of students overcoming adversity to make good on their studies and one latest example is water vendor Jaykummer Teberio, who was scheduled to graduate from college just last Wednesday.
Teberio received a Mayor’s Special Award during the Cebu City Charter Day last Feb. 24 and plans to study for the board exam for teachers and then work at a private school this year.
Looking at his photo, I remembered seeing Teberio selling bottled water in flamboyant fashion to jeepney drivers and commuters along the Mabolo section fronting SM City Cebu and wondering how he manages to endure the daily grind of summer heat and the rainy weather to support himself with his meager livelihood.
Knowing that he graduated and will give back in his own way to students who, like him, also aspire to make something of themselves gives one a sense of comfort and inspiration to also look past one’s own travails in life in order to transcend it.
Our own stories may not make it to YouTube or any social media, but like them, we deal with our own difficulties and uncertainties of the future and overcome them even with only the support and reassurance of a small circle of family and friends on our side.
Or as in the case in today’s interconnected world, watching and taking inspiration from stories of people like Mrs. Santiago, Cabrera and Teberio who start or end on one path and take another in their own respective journeys in life.
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