Insights - #01

Some weeks back, I, together with my co-tutor, Cai Ignacio, went to our kids’ humble dwellings. This experience helped us realize how lucky we are. We are in the Ateneo hating math and thinking about where to drink beer after school hours, when there are people out there struggling just to crawl their way into finishing grade school because of their financial inability. We also realized from our kids’ parents how important TD was for their children. According to one parent, her daughter would be very excited every Tuesday morning since she would have a chance to enhance her skills during the tutoring sessions. We too are excited every Tuesday morning. Not because we are going to play an important role in the kids’ lives, but because of the fact that we are thinking, “Pare Tuesday, tatlong subjects lang tapos freetime na!” After the home visit, I realized, we cannot treat some other people’s education, their life as free time! It was as if we were holding their future in our hands before, and we were just playing with it. After the home visit we promised to ourselves never to treat a Tuesday like that never again. As hard as we can, we will try to make TD something that will make them achieve and help their families in the future. Lastly, we also realized the heartbreaking truth that some parents have lost hope on their children. There was one parent who was actually training her daughter to become a good maid someday! We told the parent that her daughter was performing poorly in math and she just replied, “Ok lang, magaling yan magwalis at maglaba. Masipag na bata yan.” In our small way, I hope we can still change this girl’s future. We hope that in helping her learn, we can change her mom’s mind, that she can make a difference in the future. I know that TD won’t make the kids earn money for their future education and I also know that TD alone would not change that stupid mother’s mind. But we can make it the first step.