After two consecutive years of disappointment as teachers of big schools, we have finally decided to go for our ultimate dream- that of building our very own preschool.

For the longest time, this idea was just like any other favorite topic of conversation. We do not take it seriously. After all, we are very much enjoying our slow and easy life as teachers in a new international school. However, as much as we take pleasure in our stress free work place, mismanagement and disorganization that are like cancer in that organization finally took its toll on us. For some insane reason, the Korean-owners of the school are fearing that Filipino teachers will sue them eventually because of the huge income disparity that exists between the local teachers and the foreign teachers (ala the famous labor case of International School of Manila). And because of the workings of their extra wild imagination, they have decided to ‘demote’ the Filipino Teachers into Assistant Teachers, as will be clearly indicated in their next contract of employment.

Let me just stress the ridiculousness of this decision… First and foremost, we are aware and have accepted the fact that Foreign teachers belong to the 6 digit salary bracket, and us, who to them, seem to be unfortunate enough to be born Filipinos, are merely 5 digit earners. The point is, we have known this before, and yet, we willingly agreed… This is because, regardless of the wage injustice, we are in more important ways, equal to them… We are all teachers, period. That is the reason why we can walk amongst them with pride. Even with our many differences, we all perform important functions in that institution. However, disregarding our many years of experience, graduate degrees, and proven competencies (as reflected in our performance management assessments) and degrading us to a mere ‘Assistant Teacher’ status is purely cruel. We could not take it… it’s mean… it’s unfair… it’s below the belt.. it’s discrimination… Because of that, we decided to say ‘no way’ and ‘adios’ to this international school.
Our many experiences as teachers strengthened the bond we have together- to the point that being separated deeply saddened us. We knew for a fact that no educational institution will hire the five of us at our current salary rate. This is how we came about the idea of building our own school. The thought of keeping the group intact in a profession that we truly love and feel passionate about really energized us. From that day on, we, little by little, started plotting out our plan.

As of this writing, I believe that we have made the best decision so far… With all honesty, I still feel grateful for the many heartaches we’ve had. It has given us the courage to finally pursue our greatest dream.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 8:59 am and is filed under A Preschool Venture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.