Stars pay tribute to their fave mentors

Teachers are generally underpaid and underappreciated, but the knowledge they impart often leaves an indelible mark in the lives that their grownup students lead. But there’s more to teaching than the information we get out of it. To quote William Butler Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

To help pay tribute to the nobility of the teaching profession, we polled some of GMA 7’s top teleserye stars to talk about the teachers who helped mold them into who they are today:

For Lovi Poe, her high school teacher’s guidance helped ease the pain when her father, Fernando Poe Jr., passed away on Dec. 14, 2004 at age 65.

She recalls, “Mr. Michael Biscocho was my adviser when I was a freshman at Colegio San Agustin. He gave me helpful advice while I was grieving, and helped see me through that difficult period in my life. A few months ago, I was happy to see him again when I went to Dubai, where he’s now based.”

“Teachers always have their students’ best interest in mind,” says Tom Rodriguez, Lovi’s costar in the teleserye, “Someone to Watch Over Me.” “In seventh grade, my teacher Mrs. Jacobson always reminded me to never apologize for who I am, and encouraged me to think ‘out of the box’—that it’s OK to be different.

“I also loved Mr. Manuel Felix, my computer maintenance teacher in high school, because he taught me to innovate and see things in different ways. Because I was into computers, he made me a teaching assistant and welcomed my unconventional ideas.”

Learning experience

The “other half” of the TomDen love team, Dennis Trillo, says he didn’t mind being mentored by a “scary” teacher as a student: “Mr. Fua, my teacher in fourth grade, had a different style—he spoke and barked his orders as a military man would. But I didn’t resent him. In fact, I liked him because he made me work harder—and I learned a lot from that whole experience.”

Rhian Ramos, who leads the cast of the TV remake of “Sinungaling Mong Puso,” admits that she was a teacher’s pet.

She explains, “I always gravitate towards people who are older than me because I am fascinated by new ideas and contrarian views. I enjoy figuring out how  people can think so differently from others, and I get a new perspective on things. It’s more interesting when people disagree with my views.

“I had a lot of favorite teachers, but if I must mention one, my shout-out goes to Ms Flora, because when I was a kid, she watched my butt! She was like, ‘I’m going to co-mom this child.’ After that, I became a Sunday school teacher in high school (laughs), because I also wanted to affect other students’ lives.”

Rafael Rosell, who’s also in “Sinungaling Mong Puso,” loved his high school mentor, Mr. Emerson. The English literature teacher taught Rafael to look beyond the written word: “When I was young, I thought people wrote poems because they rhymed, or read books because they had good stories.

“It opened my eyes. Mr. Emerson told me that there was always something deeper than what we see on the surface. He taught me to read between the lines. So, I grew up searching for deeper meaning about everything—and that’s my teacher’s fault (laughs).”

Kiko Estrada, Rafael and Rhian’s costar, learned from his Psychology professor at the College of St. Benilde the hard way. “My teacher was tough on me, but it was partly my fault. I was failing her class, so she challenged me to deliver a monologue in front of the class and get a 100 percent grade to pass the subject.

“I decided to reenact Al Pacino’s bad-guy scene in ‘Scarface.’ The character is all coked out and cursed all throughout. I was looking at my teacher the entire time, never dropped character, started kicking the chairs around me, then made my way to the back of the room, where my teacher was seated. After I delivered my scathing last line to her, she gave me a perfect score— and I passed the subject.”

For her part, Kim Domingo’s most memorable “run-in” with a teacher wasn’t as pleasant.

She shares, “My music teacher was a terror. I couldn’t understand why she would always pick on me, basta lagi n’ya lang akong pinag-iinitan. So, I told my parents about it, and went to the guidance counselor to complain about her. She’s living proof that not every teacher deserves to be emulated!”

(Ed’s Note: Some of the interviewees could no longer remember the first names of their favorite teachers.)