Perfect Combination

If you want to get rich, don’t become a teacher.

This is a sad joke shared around among public high school teachers. Yes it is sad, but its true, at least how most of the teachers see it to be. So you get to wonder why a successful, business-oriented individual quit venturing the rich world of commerce and enter the poverty-stricken world of education.

She is born from a well-off and business – minded family. She studied college in an exclusive girls only college in Cebu City. Her parents wanted for her to take up business course to continue their family business, jewelry trading and some general merchandising store, when the time is right, but her love is in the field of medicine. Her parents stopped supporting her education because she disobeyed them. Being a daughter of a businessman that she is, she continued her college education by selling stuff: from affordable food items to expensive jewelries.

To make the story short, she fell in love, have kids, got married and thus stopped schooling but still continued into jewelry retailing and became successful at it. It just so happen that there are just things that goes perfectly if they get paired with each other. Take for instance, coffee. Coffee is best paired with creamer and not milk. Bread is for butter and that is also why there is Jack and Jill and not Jack and Jane.

The same goes for a person. There are some who are blessed with both beauty and brains. With her, she is benefited with the compassionate heart and the brains and charisma of a sales executive. With these two, she went far in the line of commerce especially in jewelry business.

She is Mrs. Evangeline Maraon: a successful businesswoman with the heart of an educator. Hilaan National High School (HNHS), Bontoc, Southern Leyte is fortunate to have her as their principal. With her, HNHS has received and will be receiving a lot of facility improvements. It is all because of Mrs. Maraon.

Ma’am Vangie, as she is fondly called, left the rich world of business to be a teacher. She has set her eyes and heart set on the welfare of the hope of our nation: the youth especially the students. She uses her business experience and charisma to the local politicians and public figures to establish good relationship. She sells HNHS the way she sells her jewelries.

Sales is a clear indicator if a business is successful. With HNHS, facility improvement is the criteria of success. Despite the fact that HNHS is located 25 kilometers from the highway, with very rough road and going there proves to be an uphill climb., HNHS is chosen as one of the recipients of the iSchools project. Their computer laboratory is with twenty brand new computers, an LCD projector and an Internet connection.

In just a short period of time, HNHS is able to ask funds for the construction of a new computer laboratory. In just a matter of six months, the school has cemented a large portion of their area that is prone to landslide. They were able to ask funds from the governor of the province himself. HNHS has also concreted their canals and is now in the process of putting up a large school name.

With HNHS location, being in remote and mountainous area where government leftists used to camp out, one could say that improvement and project funding would be slow, like a turtle’s walk, if not impossible. But HNHS has proved it wrong, or better said, Mrs. Evangeline Maraon has proved it wrong. There are projects, improvement and still more to come for HNHS. Funds arrived and improvement is fast because HNHS principal just happens to be a businesswoman by nature.

Just like body is to soul, Ma’am Vangie is to Hilaan National High School: perfect combination for the improvement of HNHS.