PUP Still Number One in the Jobstreet

2007 when I first started teaching in PUP, coming from Davao City where I stayed for more than 10 years prior to my stint in this school.  The first thing I asked from my students in Tourism ( the class I was handling during that time ) was, how is PUP now? They answered " ma'm malungkot po kasi po ayaw pong tanggapin ang mga graduates ng school natin sa mga company kasi po pag may welga raw po ang lider ay galing sa PUP",  ( ma'm it is not quite good because the graduates of our school are rejected by companies because if there would be strike, the leader of the strike would always be a graduate of PUP) I was so worried because where would these students go after graduation?  My efforts then would just be wasted.  Being trained at the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) as Values Trainor, I started a personal advocacy to lift the spirits of my students and to focus on values formation side by side with their lessons in Basic Accounting and Taxation. 

To my mind then, if I would handle 40-50 students  in a class and I would have 6-8 classes in a semester I would have on the average 350 students per semester and 700 students per year.  I planned to transform values of students every semester, by not being absent on the semester's first day of classes, so we could have our orientation and values formation.  It is only on the first day of the semester that I could do this.  So every first day of semester, I would really make exercises that would allow my students to search who they are...SINO AKO (WHO AM I)?  And I would allow them to write their mission and vision for the whole semester.  Everybody would recite his/her mission and vision, word for word and if he/she would fail to recite what he/she has written, then that would be the start of the whole values formation.

2007-2016, after 9 years of full-time teaching in this school, Jobstreet released a record that PUP is number one and that meant- the PUP students are the most preferred workers by the companies. Nine times Seven Hundred (9 x 700) means that I have contributed more or less 6,200 students with good values in the field.  2017, ten years since my first semester in the school, I should have sent 7,000 dependable, reliable and persevering workers in the field.

Where did I get my inspiration to do this?  When I moved out of the BIR as an examiner, my two friends were recommending me to assume a position in their respective offices.  One friend was working for a Korean employer and the other friend is the former treasurer of Caloocan City Government, Madam Evelina Mediano-Garma.  My friend who had a Korean employer was leaving for Canada and she recommended me to her boss to take her place.  I met with her boss and discussed the problems of his company then, but I did not accept the position for I was already employed in the PUP and I suggested to him that it was better for him to change the kind of business he had then, because that kind of business was a nationalized .  My other friend, Ate Evy, as I usually call her, who was the Treasurer of Caloocan City, would really want me to succeed her as the Treasurer of Caloocan. But there was something that I was still longing to do which was not in the Caloocan Government. 

I could not forget the requests of these two friends, that these thoughts came to my mind.. that...I WOULD MAKE ALL MY STUDENTS JUST LIKE ME, someone who would be recommended to do tasks, someone who could be trusted, someone who could deliver, so that when another friend would ask me to do a job, I would have someone to send in place of me....  I have already embraced teaching I could not be an office worker anymore...but I have agents to do the job, workers who are dedicated to their work, whose values for good work were formed .....my students in PUP.