THE passion to teach does not end when a teacher retires. This holds true for Josefina F. Embile, 62, who retired at the age of 61 in 2013, after nearly four decades of teaching.
“Ma’am Embile,” as she is fondly called by her former students, is the eldest among seven. She and her siblings were raised by parents in Santa Cruz, an upland barangay in Barcelona, Sorsogon.
Through the fortune her father made as an employee of an ice-cream company in Manila, all seven children studied college.
At the time the company’s plant was razed by fire, her father had already graduated her and the four other older children from college.
Ma’am Embile graduated from primary school at the Macabari Elementary School in the same town, finished high school at Colegio de la Milagrosa in Sorsogon City (now Saint Louise de Marillac College) in 1968, and received a bachelor’s degree in Education, major in History from the same school in 1972.
Two years later, in January, she began to teach at Barcelona Municipal High School, now Barcelona National Comprehensive High School, where she later oversaw and advised the student council for years.
Thousands of students, many of whom she could not recall by name, had said she was among their most inspiring teacher.
She was a teacher for 39 years of her life, helping teach students who later became a telecommunications consultant, a sales manager, a naval officer, a seafarer, a teacher, and a journalist.
Like a second mother in school, she was happy and proud about the promising talents she saw among her brood of students, and at times, worried about the uncertainties that lay ahead.
Students may have forgotten to thank her for her guidance, but definitely, she was never forgotten.
She married Rodrigo Embile Sr., the father of her four children. Lorenzo, eldest, is an electrical engineer who graduated from Bicol University (BU); Rodrigo Jr., currently taking up his master’s degree in New Mexico, is a geology graduate from University of the Philippines Diliman; Ramon, who graduated from BU, is a nurse; and Genevieve, youngest, who went to Ago Medical and Educational Center in Legazpi City, is also a nurse.
In 2013, not long after she retired, she returned to school, not to mentor again for formal education, but as a catechist, to help Saint Joseph parish church in its formation apostolate for the young in Barcelona.
It’s not the first time she taught catechism though. Back in college she was a catechist.
Currently teaching catechism to students in BNCHS, the school she taught at for 39 years, Ma’am Embile said she will give formative instructions as long as she can.
She is alarmed by the downside of the advancement in the media technology, particularly the unbridled contents available to young minds, threatening the moral formation of young people, and cntributing to widen society’s moral collapse.
Though not outspoken on political issues, she observed that the town needs more able leaders and particularly the young people, who are not inclined to exercise their right to suffrage.
Image credits: Oliver Samson