Fr. Ewald Hauck Dinter, Societas Verbi Divini (SVD), a member of the Mangyan Heritage Center (MHC) Board of Trustees and Executive Director of Mangyan Mission was awarded as one of the four honorees of the recently concluded Many Faces of the Teacher program of the Bato Balani Foundation, September 27 at the SM Mall of Asia.

In the gathering of the country’s best educators, Fr. Dinter was described as a Cultural Preserver. He believes that education should be indigenous as he teaches the Mangyans to keep their culture and develop it. The Mangyan students are encouraged to attend class in their traditional clothes. He even adjusted the class schedules according to the tribe’s customs, needs, and the climate of their place. The revival of the creation and use of traditional Mangyan instruments are also practiced in the class.

Amang as he is fondly called is also the priest behind encouraging the Mangyans to educate themselves and not to depend on the lowlanders to speak for them and also to have their own graduates and professionals. He is also the one responsible in the creation of Mangyan schools in Oriental Mindoro, namely: Naswak Mangyan School in Bongabong, Piket Mangyan School in San Teodoro and the Kisluyan Mangyan School in Victoria. Amang also led the establishment of the Mangyan Education Center as the first Mangyan High School in Bait, Mansalay in 1987.

As German SVD priest assigned in Mindoro, for 40 years, he has lived his life with the Mangyans and turned himself into a teacher, a father figure, and a champion of the Filipino culture. And to quote the line written in the award that he received, “After 40 years of missionary teaching, he says he’s learned more from his students than he could taught them.”

Amang was awarded together with Margarita Germo Gabriel of Sindangan Elementary School, Southern Leyte whose school topped the 2007 National Achievement Test; Leonides Esteban Bulalayao of Nueva Ecija, a Math teacher who devised strategies in teaching Math while being the Information Communication and Technology coordinator in her school.  And lastly, Jenelyn Marasigan Naylon from Naujan, Oriental Mindoro is considered the mobile teacher who rides her bike to educate and organize far flung communities. From one community to another, she bikes her way to teach proper waste disposal and initiate the creation of the Waste Management Council and Materials Recovery Facilities.

Amang will turn 71 on October 16 and is currently on a study leave for a pastoral renewal course at the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila until December this year.

The Many Faces of the Teacher is a search for the teacher that best represents the nobility of the teaching profession and who garners the inspiration not only of his students but of each person and life that they encounter.