EDUCATION Secretary Leonor M. Briones thanked Fortune Life Insurance Co. for recognizing teachers who taught the values of hard work and discipline in the classroom, saying “these are the very values that had made us as a nation and a people.”
Briones deplored how young people nowadays think that “to be successful, you go on the easiest and fastest way” in her remarks as guest of honor and speaker at Fortune Life’s 2016 Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua Gintong Parangal Para sa Edukasyon held on October 18 in Bulwagan ng Karunungan, Department of Education (DepEd) Central Office, Pasig City.
Eight teachers, who best taught the values of perseverance, hard work and discipline in the classroom, were honored during the event, which also marked the launching of the sixth year of the Values Advocacy Program, a joint project of Fortune Life with the DepEd and Mary Lindbert International, an advocacy group.
The Gintong Parangal Award for teachers, launched a year after the Values Advocacy Program and now on its fifth year, went to teachers coming from as far as Bicol and Leyte, recognized for their exemplary dedication to their career while supporting Fortune Life’s advocacy.
The awardees were Windel V. Alvarez, Master Teacher of District Alternative Learning System Center in Caramoan, Camarines Sur; Mellany R. Arandia, Master Teacher 1 from Comembo Elementary School in Makati City; Cynthia F. Balaguer, Master Teacher 2 of Albay Central School, Legazpi City, Albay; Miguel V. Dumas Jr., district supervisor of the Division Office in Tacloban, Leyte; and Dr. Amelita P. de Mesa, principal of Manuel G. Araullo High School in Ermita, Manila.
Three honorable-mention awardees were Aileen R. Apostol of Santo Niño Special Education Center in Tacloban City, Leyte; Audepaz E. Benitez of Muntinlupa National High School; and Vladimir B. Paraiso of Timoteo Paez High School in Metro Manila. All awardees received trophies and special prizes. In his response on behalf of the teacher awardees, Dumas said he was “deeply grateful, humbled and even greatly challenged to be more dedicated to carry on the values of hard work and discipline,” which he described as “the only investment I had to become one of these chosen few from among others in the field of education.”
Dumas expressed his sincere thanks to Fortune Life, particularly Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua, founder of Fortune Life, “who had the heart and initiative to conduct such a very honorable way of acknowledging and inspiring us all to continue with this great task entrusted to us.”
“May you pursue your commitment to this program to keep the passion in our hearts burning and to serve as the light in our land, the Philippines,” he said.
In her keynote speech, Briones said when she took over as head of the DepEd, she found out “the department had been receiving generous donations from a gambling corporation every year for the building of schoolhouses, school houses marked with the name of the corporation and announced in television and media.”
In a move “never done before since the days of the dictatorship,” she said, she returned the money, the only education secretary to do so. “Gambling and all its related implications to young people are not consistent with the values of hard work and discipline.”
Briones also challenged educators to teach students and learners “how to accept and to live with change,” because of the fast technological developments and trends that are happening. “By the time a learner or student graduates, whatever they learn is already irrelevant… We have to teach them to be creative, to be innovative.”
She also called on the private sector to emulate the example set by Fortune Life, and consider setting up scholarship programs “that will contribute to the positive building of our teachers…. We teachers cannot teach new things or ways of being creative, of confronting solutions, of living with change.”
Fortune Life Insurance and the Cabangon family, Briones added, have shown “it is possible for us to work together, to capacitate the teachers, to inspire them, to encourage them because we do not learn everything in a university or a teachers’ college.”
Gintong Parangal Award to continue
D. Arnold A. Cabangon, Fortune Life president, said the advocacy of his father—the search for teachers who promote in the most outstanding way the values of hard work, perseverance and discipline—will continue.
“Every year [of the Gintong Parangal] is very special, more so this year because our Dad is not here, [and] it is up to us to carry on what he started,” Cabangon said, noting the values of hard work and discipline the advocacy program promotes were traits possessed by his father.
“I think my father is the best example of hard work and discipline,” he said.