I just spend the last two days visiting a Bahá’i-inspired school up North in Pangasinan. I first heard about Feliz Academy one year ago, and I’ve kept in touch with the Administration (especially during the bicentenary celebrations a few months ago) but only had the chance to pay them a visit this week and boy has this short visit been worth it!
I don’t know if it’s because Feliz literally means “happy” in Spanish which is why I’ve enjoyed my visit so much or because I’ve always just loved school. Yep, I was that student.
Coming to Feliz Academy brought back memories of my year volunteering as a teacher at City Montessori School, Lucknow. Although you really can’t compare – Feliz has 500 students; CMS has over 50,000. Feliz is just managed by two (incredible) men; CMS has an entire head office with more than a dozen departments. But let me tell you what they have in common. These two schools, though local, have universal mission and vision statements. They inspire the students to look beyond not just their four walls but out of their countries to see “the earth as but one country and mankind its citizens”, enabling them see themselves as part of something bigger. In both schools you will hear their Principals utter “Every child is potentially the light of the world”.
I was very humbled to be invited to give a talk to the teachers, to sort of inspire them. I say humbled because who am I? I’ve only volunteered as a teacher for one year; what can I say to these teachers who actually took up education and have been teaching for years?! But then I realized that when the owners gave me that privilege, they wanted me to share my experiences as a “travel teacher” – bits and pieces of lessons I learnt from my travels over the years and from my service activities and so I did that.
I then started to reflect on how as a teacher you might never see the results or changes in the students with your two eyes. Transformation takes time, and most times when the students have already graduated. We are not the only ones to plant the seed or nurture the plant; we are just one of the many hands.
For the rest of my life, I’ll never forget my English teacher in the 3rd grade – Mr Uwem. I remember during one of our Creative Writing classes, I wrote a poem about a gold fish, then he gave me back my paper with a note written “Farzaneh, stop going ahead of your class”. I didn’t really understand what this meant, until over the months he kept calling me aside telling me he sees so much potential in my creative writing. Four years later, in the 7th grade, he decided to come up with the school’s first magazine and he called me on board to be a co-editor. That whole experience – writing articles and editing all the submissions opened up a whole new world for me. Then I had to deliver a speech in front of the school when we launched the magazine, and afterwards one parent came up to me and said “Farzaneh, you should become a journalist when you grow up” and that stuck with me…even until this day. So it was Mr Uwem who saw a potential in me, encouraged me and even went ahead to give me the opportunity/the space to explore this talent he discovered in me.
Like Bahá’u’lláh says, “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom”.
Being a teacher is extremely challenging…but it can also be the most rewarding profession. If anyone says “being a teacher is easy”… they’re obviously not doing it right. I’m not just referring to academic teachers, but even mentors (sports, arts, business, etc). It is never enough to only prepare for your subject; you have to be prepared for questions and conversations in every other field. We need to be careful with the answers we give students because most of them will carry that answer for the rest of their lives. Whether or not we have the answers, we should always encourage students to be curious and to independently investigate the truth. Rather than asserting knowledge, we should empower students to seek and acquire knowledge. The only way around this is to remind them that they possess such capacity, because that is how bountiful God is. That's one of the reasons I really admire CMS and Feliz Academy - they stress on spiritual education (mind you, this is NOT the same as religious education) equally with the sciences.
I salute everyone who threads this path because they’re basically carrying the weight of the future on their shoulders.
"Among the greatest of all great services is the education of children, and promotion of the various sciences, crafts and arts. Praised be God, ye are now exerting strenuous efforts toward this end. The more ye persevere in this most important task, the more will ye witness the confirmations of God, to such a degree that ye yourselves will be astonished. This verily is a matter beyond all doubt, a pledge that shall certainly be redeemed." - Abdu'l-Bahá