---
title: "From Fear To Love: Things I Learned From My Favourite Teachers"
description: As we honour teachers on World Teacher's Day, Neema reflects on the teachers that continue to influence her.
image: https://classroom.studio/hubfs/Blog%20images/Fear%20to%20love.jpg
---
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Classroom Studio Blog
# From Fear To Love: Things I Learned From My Favourite Teachers
 Neema Ejercito October 5, 2026
I admit it: I was a teacher’s pet. I would be the type of student who is on top of her schoolwork (I mean, I gave up being one of the three witches in our university theatre production of Macbeth because it conflicted with my studies!) and asked teachers and professors thoughtful questions that may not have always landed the way I intended. But put me in any school system, and I flourished.
I don’t believe I would have loved school so much if it weren’t for some really great teachers. And this World Teacher’s Day, I wanted to give a shout-out to three who have and continue to influence me. Two have passed on, and I have lost touch with the other one, but all of them have left indelible impressions in my life as an educator, writer, and human.
The first one is Dan McCarthy, who was my American History teacher in high school. I went to an American Lutheran international school when my family moved to Hong Kong for my dad’s work. Mr. McCarthy was so thoughtful in teaching us about the Salem witch trials and the other popular historical events in the US that his take seemed so refreshing. He also took the time to answer my questions, whether in class or after, with such deliberate care that I witnessed living history from how he taught.
The second one is Randy Bustamante. He was my Filipino 1 professor in my first year of university, back in the Philippines from six years of living in Hong Kong. My Tagalog was rusty, especially my writing, but when I took the assessment to check if I would be in the regular class versus the one for foreigners, I was so proud to have made it to Filipino 1 with a 60% passing mark. Never mind that it was the lowest score I ever got, at that point. I don’t know if it was because I felt I needed to prove my legitimacy in that class or that the canon stories Randy taught felt so new having lived away from the Philippines for so long, but how I devoured them. I listed and looked up all the vocabulary words per story, joined a study group, and when I received a B+ equivalent in his class, I felt like I had graduated Summa Cum Laude.
I still use Randy’s three-entries-a-week journal writing for my creative writing sessions to this day. I think I also picked up on not taking oneself too seriously as a teacher and having fun in class when, on an examination day, he took out a colouring book and crayons and coloured while he was proctoring us. He passed on right before the pandemic, and to this day, I keep a totem of a red cardinal on display at our foyer to remind me of our last conversation, when I didn’t know it would be the last. He had been one of the few people I updated about our move to Canada, and he had joked that we could bring him as our househelp. His passing is the first one in my life when I understood the meaning of someone leaving a hole in one’s heart.
The third influential teacher in my life was Ricky Abad, my sociology and theatre mentor. He loomed large in my life as I looked up to him academically and artistically. From Ricky, I truly learned to question everything, the beliefs I took for granted, my opinions that I thought were facts, assumptions I stood on as if they were unbreakable foundations. Learning that it was okay to question things was very freeing, and because he helped ground it in the theories and practices of such distinguished foreign and local heavyweights, I did not find myself aimless and random in asking why things were the way they were. Over a decade after I graduated, I had the pleasure to take his teaching workshop with my sister, a high school public school teacher, and was amazed again how he skillfully wove teaching philosophy with theatre to keep students engaged, and which I used in my creative writing classes later on.
How I miss these teachers in my life, and although it’s been said that they live on in us because of the impressions they’ve left, I still long for the times I could just email them or I could chat with them online to share an article I’d read or to hear how their travels went.
Happy World Teacher’s Day, dear teachers! We may try to show you how much you mean to us while we’re in your classes, but your impressions live with us even when we’re out in the “real world”. We cannot thank you enough.
*It is perhaps Neema Ejercito’s love for her teachers that continues to drive her in her pursuit of a healthy education ecosystem. By continually leading the Scinitillant Ventures team in improving their flagship platform, Classroom Studio, she listens to teachers, school administrators, tutors, and parents to address their pain points through its growing features. When she is taking a break from engaging with her amazing colleagues, their users, and seeking out potential collaborators, she loves spending time with her family, composed of her husband, their kids, and her plants.*
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