Journal 1: What do you know about our Patron? 

Being a product of the Lasallian education, I have always valued the accomplishments and nobility that Baptism St Jon De La Salle and the Brothers were able to impart to make changes in the society.

St. John Baptist De La Salle was born to a wealthy family in Reims, France on April 30, 1651. He was the eldest child of Louis de La Salle and Nicolle de Moet de Brouillet. La Salle received the tonsure at age eleven and was named canon of Rheims Cathedral when he was fifteen. He was sent to the College des Bons Enfants, where he pursued higher studies and, on July 10, 1669, he took the degree of Master of Arts. When De La Salle had completed his classical, literary, and philosophical courses, he was sent to Paris to enter the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice on January 18, 1670. His mother died on July 19, 1671, and on February 9, 1672 his father died. This circumstance obliged him to leave Saint-Sulpice on January 19, 1672. He was now twenty-one, the head of the family, and as such had the responsibility of educating his four brothers and two sisters. He completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 26 on April 9, 1678. Two years later he received a Doctorate in Theology.

De La Salle was a man of refined manners, a cultured mind, and great practical ability, in whom personal prosperity was balanced with kindness and affability. In physical appearance he was of commanding presence, somewhat above the medium height. He had large, penetrating blue eyes and a broad forehead.

De La Salle became involved in education little by little, without ever consciously setting out to do so. He lived in a time when society was characterized by great disparity between the rich and the poor. Jean Baptiste de la Salle believed that education gave hope and opportunity for people to lead better lives of dignity and freedom.

The Sisters of the Child Jesus were a new religious congregations whose work was the care of the sick and education of poor girls. The young priest had helped them in becoming established, and then served as their chaplain and confessor. It was through his work with the sisters that in 1679, he met Adrian Nyel.What began as a charitable effort to help Adrian nyel establish a school for the poor in De La Salle's home town gradually became his life's work. With De La Salle's help, a school was soon opened. Shortly thereafter, a wealthy woman in Rheims nyel told that she would also endowed a school, but only if La Salle would help.

At that time, most children had little hope for the future. Moved by the plight of the poor who seemed so "far from salvation" either in this world or the next, he determined to put his own talents and advanced education at the service of the children "often left to themselves and badly brought up".

De La Salle knew that the teachers were struggling in Reims, lacking leadership, purpose, training, and he found himself increasingly taking deliberate steps to help this small group of men with their work. First, in 1680, he invited them to take their meals in his home, as much to teach them table manners as to inspire and instruct them in their work. This crossing of social boundaries that one of his relatives was found difficult to bear. In 1681, De La Salle realized that he would have to take a further step - he brought the teachers into his own home to live with him. De La Salle's relatives were deeply disturbed, his social class was shocked. When, a year later, his family home was lost at auction because of a family lawsuit, De La Salle rented a house into which he and the handful of teachers moved.

De La Salle thereby began a new religious institute, the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers (in the UK, Ireland, Malta, Australasia, and Asia) or, most commonly in the United States The Christian Brothers. (They are sometimes confused with a different congregation of the same name founded by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice in Ireland, who are known in the US as the Irish Christian Brothers.) The De La Salle Brothers were the first Roman Catholic religious teaching religious institute that did not include any priests.

In his own words, one decision led to another until De La Salle found himself doing something that he had never anticipated. De La Salle wrote:

"I had imagined that the care which I assumed of the schools and the masters would amount only to a marginal involvement committing me to no more than provide for the subsistence of the masters and assuring that they acquitted themselves of their tasks with piety and devotedness. .. Indeed, if I had ever thought that the care I was taking of the schoolmasters out of pure charity would ever have made it my duty to live with them, I would have dropped the whole project. ... God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning of death. "

De La Salle's enterprise met opposition from the ecclesiastical authorities who resisted the creation of a new form of religious life, a community of consecrated laymen to conduct free schools "together and by association". The educational establishment resented his innovative methods and his insistence on gratuity for all, regardless of whether they could afford to pay. Nevertheless, De La Salle and his Brothers succeeded in creating a network of quality schools throughout France that featured instruction in the vernacular, students grouped according to ability and achievement, integration of religious instruction with secular subjects, well-prepared teachers with a sense of vocation and mission, and the involvement of parents.

In 1685, De La Salle founded what is generally considered the first normal school - that is, a school whose purpose is to train teachers - in Rheims, France.

Worn out by austerities and exhausting labors, De La Salle died at Saint Yon near Rouen early in 1719 on Good Friday, only three weeks before his 68th birthday.

De La Salle was a pioneer in programs for training lay teachers. Of his writings on education, Matthew Arnold remarked: "Later works on the same subject have improved little the precepts, while they entirely lack the unction." He was a pedagogical thinker of note and is among the founders of a distinctively modern pedagogy. His educational innovations include Sunday courses for working young men, one of the first institutions in France for the care of delinquents, technical schools, and secondary schools for modern languages, arts, and sciences. De La Salle's work quickly spread through France and, after his death, continued to spread across the globe.

Currently, about 6,000 Brothers and 75,000 lay and religious colleagues worldwide serve as teachers, counselors and guides to 900,000 students in over 1,000 educational institutions in 84 countries.

There are a number of streets named after La Salle, generally due to the location of a Christian Brothers School. These include: Sukhumvit Soi 105, Bangkok, Thailand; Bacolod, Philippines (where the University of St. La Salle and St. Joseph School - La Salle is located); La Salle Street in Mandaluyong City. There is also De La Salle Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri; La Salle Road, Hong Kong; La Salle Road, Towson, Maryland.

Also, there are many educational institutions named after him, such as De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines; La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; La Salle High School in Pasadena, California; De La Salle High School in Concord, California; and De La Salle High School in Revesby, New South Wales, Australia. He is one of the six patron saints of Good Samaritan Catholic College. There is also St. La Salle School in Reedley, California. There is a technical school, Collège de la Salle, in Douala, Cameroon, and De La Salle College, Jersey. There is a De LaSalle Academy in Fort Myers, Florida, De La Salle University in Bogota, Colombia.

De La Salle dedicated much of his life to the education of poor children in France; In doing so, he started many lasting educational practices. He is considered the founder of the first Catholic schools.

As an aspiring business leader of this country, I see this as a calling I carry. It's a lifelong mission to do God's work, to serve and to help my fellow Filipino citizens. I will see to it that all I had learnings will and the values ​​that the university taught me will not be put unto waste. The life of our patron saint St. John Baptist De La Salle will serve as a light to guide me on my path and remind me of my calling in case im going the other way.