Miss Michelle C. Baja, proudly a Licensed Professional Teacher, was born in the province of Davao Oriental but was raised in Davao City. Together with her family they enjoyed living a simple life and her parents made sure to give the best for them. During her elementary days she was a silent and shy type student and was always awarded as the most behaved and neat. She also loved joining events and cultural dances. Her leadership skills started during her fourth grade when she became the class president. Being a teacher was her dream, and the reason for that was, during her sixth grade, she was the class president again. There was a time when their adviser was ill and had a difficulty in finding a substitute teacher, so he let Michelle supervise the class. At that moment she told herself, “I DON’T WANT TO BE A TEACHER!” But she realized that everything has its purpose and reason. Until high school, Michelle was so active at school, still become president and joined interschool competitions.
Michelle enrolled in the College of Education at the University of Southeastern Philippines, majoring in Biological Science. She considered this chapter as the most active, passionate, energetic, and motivating time. She’s still an active student and became the Organizational President of the Science Majors Society for a year and tried running a position in the highest student governing body of USEP, the OCSC (Obrero Campus Student Council). Indeed, it was a memorable experience, she was honed and nurtured with the abilities and skills because of her engagements. Currently, she’s taking her master’s degree at St. Mary’s of Tagum Inc.
Teacher, Ma’am, Miss, Teach, Cher, these are the names they used to call Michelle for seven years. She loves teaching, and loves talking to her students, hearing their inputs and sharing their lives. Her eagerness to share and give her learnings to them is very high. But there are times she is tired, exhausted and felt like “she’s just nothing”, “YOU ARE JUST A TEACHER!” She began questioning if she deserved the challenges so far but later realized her happy moments with her students and reminded herself all she just need is a little escape and find time to breathe once more, that teachers are humans too, not robots ‘and has limitations as well. She reminded herself that “YOU CAN DO IT” and “YOU DID GREAT”.
How fantastic on how the ability, strength, passion and dedication of Michelle was tested. Learning is a two-way process, but it became the biggest challenge for her on how to provide quality education in the new normal. Yes, it’s very demanding, needs lot of preparation yet appreciation and proper compensation is what Michelle, and the other teachers need. Hoping crisis will end soon to start a new beginning and hope.
Michelle is very happy sharing her inputs and knowledge to her students here in LPU-Davao, and she wants to tell her students that learning never stops and always empower your thoughts and ideas in everything. She also wanted to thank her students for supporting and believing in her, wishing her students to widen their skills and abilities in life.
Michelle believes in the saying that “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose.” Life is not easy, very chaotic, and stressful. This line becomes the structure her life. Learn to accept failures, which will bring you steps for your track. Focus on your own timeline because life is not a race but rather a sowing field that you need to work, extend efforts and be patient for your own time to grow and be ready for harvesting. It simply tells us that your past won’t define your future no matter how dark it was; if you do better in your present time, then rest assured you will have a brighter future.