Putting One’s Faith in Education

An instructor with a vision for his students In 1948, a Carmelite nun, Teresita Castillo, in a convent in Batanga Province, fifty miles from Manila in the Philippines, reported seeing a vision, an apparition of the Virgin Mary, a reporting that came to be known throughout the world as the Miracle of Roses. The archbishop insisted that Sister Teresita deny the vision, one of a total of nineteen visions that she would ultimately report. She refused and was expelled from the convent. Teresita made her way to the big city and devoted her life to a large parish taking care of the poverty-stricken and destitute, where she found the most meaningful work of her entire life. Sister Teresita is the aunt of Virgilio Castillo Tiongson, affectionately called Mr. T., who has taught Business English, Career Development and Computer Applications at the Jamaica campus for eight years. Not unlike his aunt, Sister Teresita, Mr. T.’s path to career fulfillment took a different path than the one he originally intended. Armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines, considered one of the best private universities in Asia, the alma mater for many presidents, generals, artists and celebrities of the Philippines, Mr. T. began a career in the corporate world and then made a career shift to the world of Education. “Although there is not big money in Education, money is not everything. The thing that kept me in the field is the fact that the students would come back and tell me about their own success. It [has always] kept me going to know that when you contribute something to students and they improve their own lives…that’s what counts for me.”