DR. LINA C. ALCANTARA GETS A REGION-WIDE SEND-OFF PARTY

Dr. Lina during the Ribbon-Cutting at the WIFI Zone

 PSAT-TESDA successfully hosted a festive Send-Off Party in honor of Dr. Lina C. Alcantara who just turned 65 last September 23, 2010. The Farewell and Good Luck Party held at the President’s Hotel, Lingayen, Pangasinan was a big turn out as almost all employees of PSAT paid their tribute to their school's last standing Doctor of Education. Madam Lina, as she has been normally addressed by PSAT employees, stepped down from her pedestal of quality public service as an uncompromising leader and first-rate educator. No less than the TESDA ROI Regional Director Washington M. Agustin headed the delegation of guests from different TESDA training institutions and provincial offices in Region I. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Alcantara exuded her usual strength and composure as she gratefully bid adieu to her friends and co-workers. Everybody was entertained by PSAT's Intellectual Orange Belles  and Green Fattening Dancers and Manararotoy Videoke Divas.

 
    Dr. Alcantara, spent 32 years of dedicated service in PSAT where she committedly served as a classroom teacher, a head teacher, and an administrator (OIC). Standing tall and tough among her peers, she took the cudgels of leadership for TESDA during her school’s volatile period of transition from DepEd. Unfazed by criticisms and sheer detractions, she upheld her dignity as a genuine educator by humbly choosing to carry on with her commitment as a teacher till her mandatory retirement.  During her last week in PSAT as a regular employee, she got a glimpse of what she deserved when she was awarded for maintaining the Best Lecture Area in the school and for that rare accolade given to her by all her students when they prepared an unprecedented Thanksgiving and Farewell Party in her honor.

 
    PSAT would surely pine for the untainted views of Madam Lina on key educational issues. PSAT would miss a leader whose harmonizing advocacy and ideal for quality school-based instruction transcends material infrastructure and numerical pelt. Yet, her retirement from PSAT is not her retirement from what she does best. She shall linger around the educational community as a college and post-graduate professor. Mabuhay at Manararotoy ka Madam Lina!

Greener Pasture - a false promise, a fading comfort or just a manararotoy hope?

We get demystified by the daily grind in our lives. We experience new things, get a little bit excited by what we haven’t got yet, roll over a bit on some routines, and then sink to exhaustion on some corner in PSAT. Life’s got to be a cycle and when that cyclic redundancy begins to sedate that tired spirit, the horizon gets gray – almost everything becomes featureless. Do you get the same futility sometimes?

What on earth are you doing? Go, get up, let loose, explore and be different! Go out of the Devil's gate even if that robotic sentry writes you down, if that's feasible. There’s too much in life that you forego by staying within your dull comfort zone, ahh is that your classroom?

Don't be afraid to get a little bit carefree sometimes.  Try your luck somewhere. And when that going gets tougher and alienating, you come back because you didn’t recognize the green out there, although actually you were wearing green, when you went there, he! he! he!. Perhaps, you don't have enough green in your pocket, just that gray P100 bill. And when you reached that blue corner in SM or anywhere else, you then thought it’s the same boring end. Or again maybe, others were holding on to your sleeves, saying you can’t be too different and the risk is getting quite deep.



Others! Why do you have to mull over their expressions and worries? Why should you care that much? Ah, you care for them – just worthy of your sacrifice or blow-out. Now, when your life and even your finances get stuck in oblivion, don’t they suffer also? You drag each other down and your relationship becomes stale – it doesn’t grow I suppose. So have the guts to pull their fingers off your arms.

Now, you have to set your vision and energy beyond the blue horizon. You can’t see it clearly first but others have gone ahead. There’s that greener pasture and it's manararotoy...It’s for you and for them. You can’t stay hesitant all your life. That comfort zone could become scratchy soon. So go ahead, make the sudden turn and God knows what’s in store for you. 

This is just a word of advice from a hungry traveller.

Related articles:

• Ways to taste new pleasures. (computerknowledge1.blogspot.com)
• Is it greener to live on a canal boat? (guardian.co.uk)
• Into My Courage Zone (socyberty.com)
• How to Have Sex That's Good for You and the Planet (alternet.org)