The cost of teacher heroism

By Herman M. Lagon

We Filipinos know what to do when a teacher performs the nearly impossible. We take a photo, write “saludo kami sa iyo,” add a few heart emojis, call the teacher a modern-day hero, and share the story until everybody feels a little better about humanity. Sometimes there is an award. There should be. What we are less practiced at doing is asking the awkward question after the applause dies down: Why did the teacher have to become a hero in the first place?

Consider Teacher Efren Bino, whose remarkable story recently resurfaced online. Beginning in 1996, he served at Mataas Elementary School in the island-barangay of Mataas in Bacacay, Albay. For 12 years, according to the account recently circulating online, he was not merely the lone teacher handling Grades 1 to 3. He also became school head, property custodian, and security guard. When boat fare became too expensive for his salary, he stayed at the school. He tutored children on weekends, went house to house encouraging parents to send them to school, and later helped seek assistance when Typhoon Reming devastated the community. His story was eventually recognized by the Bato Balani Foundation’s Many Faces of the Teacher campaign.

Heroic? Absolutely. Give the man his flowers, plaque, standing ovation, and whatever recognition is due him. Yet precisely because his service was extraordinary, we should resist turning his circumstances into a heartwarming template for teaching. One teacher doing the work of several people for years is an inspiring human story. It is also an uncomfortable staffing story, made even harder to romanticize when teachers are routinely asked to do more with less, while institutional corruption and ineptitude compete with classrooms for scarce public resources.

This tension has a distinctly Filipino flavor. We admire “tiis,” “diskarte,” “malasakit,” and “kabayanihan.” These virtues have carried families and communities through typhoons, poverty, pandemics, and countless Monday mornings. But sociologist Louie Giray (2026) offers a useful warning. Writing in the Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, he calls teacher “kabayanihan” a potentially “weaponized virtue”: genuine dedication can be celebrated in ways that make systemic neglect seem normal. His argument is not that teachers should stop caring. It is that admiration becomes problematic when sacrifice starts functioning as an unofficial job requirement and public expectation.

Teachers know how easily that happens. Ma’am buys bond paper because the supply has run out. Sir pays for a struggling learner’s notebook. An adviser answers parent messages at 10:37 p.m. Someone repairs the electric fan, paints the room, and renovates the board, because waiting for the paperwork might take longer than surviving the heat. Another teacher becomes adviser, coach, counselor, emcee, data encoder, decorator, photographer, and emergency technician—occasionally before recess. These gestures can be beautiful expressions of care. The trouble begins when “Thank you for doing that” quietly becomes “Teachers are expected to do that.”

I was reminded of this recently when our STEP UP Project, a two-year training for guidance designates, brought us to Paga Elementary School in San Enrique, Iloilo, to sit down with teachers and community partners and listen to what school life actually looks like on the ground. A couple of teachers told us that on many days, they prepare “daha”—food for some pupils—simply to make sure the children show up for class. It was said almost matter-of-factly, as though feeding a hungry child before teaching the lesson had simply become part of the day’s work. And from what we heard, theirs is hardly an isolated experience.

Schools do have feeding programs, but these are generally targeted at identified undernourished learners. Hunger, unfortunately, does not always arrive with the right classification. A child may not qualify for feeding assistance and still come to school without enough to eat. So teachers fill the gap because the child is already there—or may not come at all without that small plate of food. That is malasakit in its most human form, and those teachers deserve our admiration. But it should also bother us. A teacher preparing “daha” so a child can attend class is a beautiful act of care; a system that quietly depends on teachers doing it is another matter.

Educational reformist Peter Greene (2015), writing about the myth of the “hero teacher,” made a related point: once we imagine excellent teachers as people capable of overcoming practically any obstacle, inadequate systems become easier to tolerate. Kim and Mauldin’s (2022) research on heroic discourse in educational leadership adds another layer. When institutions depend too heavily on exceptional individuals to solve problems, responsibility becomes concentrated, collaboration can weaken, and improvement becomes difficult to sustain. The hero may save Monday. The system still has to work on Tuesday.

None of this gives teachers a free pass. Some teachers are excellent, some need mentoring, and some plainly need to do better. Professional accountability matters. A broken photocopier cannot explain a poorly prepared lesson, and “the system” should not become a convenient alibi for negligence. Teachers owe learners competence, fairness, preparation, respect, and continuing growth. But accountability has to travel in both directions. If the same problems keep appearing across schools and generations—shortages, overloaded personnel, inadequate facilities, excessive ancillary duties—then repeatedly asking individual teachers to compensate through “malasakit” is not reform. It is improvisation with good PR.

Award-winning teacher Jeremy S. Adams makes this distinction especially useful: teachers can profoundly change lives without becoming responsible for repairing every condition affecting those lives. Poverty, family instability, health, nutrition, community safety, technology access, and social inequality do not disappear when a child enters a classroom. A gifted teacher can soften their effects, sometimes dramatically. No teacher can erase all of them. Public education works best when competent teachers stand inside competent systems, not when exceptional people are expected to rescue weak ones.

There is another fairness issue we rarely mention. Not every teacher can make the same sacrifices. One teacher may be single and able to remain late; another has children waiting at home. One can afford to advance money for classroom materials; another is counting the days until payday. One can physically endure a difficult remote assignment; another cannot. The teacher who gives extraordinarily deserves gratitude. The teacher who maintains reasonable boundaries does not automatically deserve less respect. A profession cannot fairly set its minimum standard according to its most self-sacrificing member.

Perhaps this is where discernment matters most: learning to hold two truths without forcing one to cancel the other. Bino’s story is genuinely inspiring. The conditions that made his extraordinary sacrifice necessary still deserve scrutiny. There is no disrespect in saying both. In fact, looking only at the hero and ignoring what surrounded him may be the easier response. Care for the person should eventually make us care about the structures in which that person works.

So, yes, let us honor our heroic teachers. Tell their stories. Let young educators learn from their courage, generosity, creativity, and love for children. But after the ceremony, somebody should check the staffing pattern, transportation support, classrooms, workload, supplies, compensation, safety, and conditions awaiting the next teacher. If a teacher crosses a dangerous river, salute the courage—and eventually build the bridge. If Ma’am keeps buying classroom supplies, thank Ma’am—and fund the classroom. If one teacher is doing three jobs, recognize the dedication—and ask where the other two people are. Those are not cynical responses to heroism. They are ways of taking heroism seriously.

Efren Bino deserves to be remembered because carrying a school almost alone for 12 years was extraordinary. The finest tribute, however, would be something less dramatic: that the teacher who comes after him gets enough colleagues, resources, transportation, and institutional support to simply teach well and go home. Honor the hero, certainly. Then fix what required the heroism.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.