The Director General of Al-Mabarrat Dr. Mohammad Baqer Fadlallah addressed a message to teachers on their day in which he said: “On Teacher's Day we stand a stand of pride before an enduring glory, work that does not go to waste, and results that bear their fruit at every moment. Being among you, I can do nothing but listen to the step of every teacher as they approach their register, their book, their board and their teaching tools, explaining and interpreting with the spirit of one responsible who never tires and never wearies.”
He added: “For a teacher to stand in their class among their students, immersed in their work, sharpening their own resolve and the resolve of their pupils with them - that is a glorification of God. For them to make an effort within their class, using active teaching strategies, or assessment, or training on alternative and reverse plans, and embracing, accompanying and supporting - that is a supplication. And everything a teacher gives their pupils of time, giving and dedication is in the sight of God, which neither slumbers nor sleeps.
He pointed out that: “The modern trends imposed by the present technological age, with the successive flood of media and the immense quantity of information that accompanies it, compel us to act with steadiness and balance - for what today's generation is exposed to is beyond their psychological capacities and intellectual qualifications, which may lead to delinquent behavioural disorders. This requires us to approach them with moderation, so as to preserve the teaching character from a tendency toward recklessness, deviation, rigidity or excess.”
He addressed the teachers, saying: “Dear ones, on Teacher's Day we must renew our resolve and our self-confidence with high spirit, seriousness, energy, patience and good work. We must not tire or weary; we must keep creating what is new and overcome time with creative energies despite the scale of exhaustion and psychological fatigue amid the deteriorating economic and living conditions, and despite reconciling the job with the conditions of living - as well as accepting the changeable psychological moods of the pupils and communicating with the families to help charge their children with positive energy.”
He recalled the director of Al-Kawthar Secondary School, the educator Rana Ismail, “the teacher who contributed, with all love and dedication, foundational contributions to the fabric of Al-Mabarrat's schools, with an educational awareness and a penetrating strategic vision which she foresaw creatively. She was an effective, ambitious and aware partner to all the hopes of the founding religious authority Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, may God be pleased with him… whom she regarded as her reference and her inspiration.
Fadlallah affirmed: “Al-Mabarrat will remain, despite the difficulties, devoted to the love of people, giving to them and helping them in every field in which it works. And those nearest have the first claim - and you are the nearest, the loved ones whom Al-Mabarrat will not abandon in times of hardship.”
He concluded: “Dear ones, your feast is not like other feasts. It is the feast perfumed with the giving of the years of your lives; it is the feast extending through all these successes your students reap here in the homeland and there where some of them have settled. So may your feast be blessed on the line of suffering mixed with joy and happiness - the happiness of doing good for the children of humanity. And may your feast be blessed on the line of the great responsibility in which you rise above every wound and transcend every pressure and pain.”
