Leyvis Yero Rodriguez, Yisenia Ochoa Sanchez, Hailier Cobo Cruzata and Ernesto Red Almaguer, are two young girls and two boys from the Cuban municipality of Jesus Menéndez ,who in the 2002, along with other young people from Las Tunas province, started off for the Cuban capital to become General Integral High School Professors in a project that at that time acquired the name of Los Valientes (The Brave ones).
Por Yaíma Puig Meneses
I knew them some years ago. We were only kids and life seemed to us so immense that we played to be great in spite of innocence and child´s fantasies. That´s why I´m not sparing emotions, surprise has got me suddenly and those I remembered as children show up as men and women, immense not only for the height they have reached, but also by the form they face its daily tasks.
I could never figure them in front of a classroom, with the enormous responsibility of teaching and preparing young people. Seven years ago, they did not supposed their professional races in that way: they were hardly a group of rebellious youngsters with aspirations for anything related to the world and the wealth of teaching.
Now they remember their days at Salvador Allende School and they all agree that, in spite of homesickness and the distance of the family, had incomparable experiences with which “we learned to see life in another way, to make us greater”.
As for this matter it was very relevant Edelio Rondón´s guidance, a professor from the Pedagogical Institute of Las Tunas, and also the experiences that everyone conserve about their days in front of a class, trying to direct and understand students whom they only surpassed in a few years.
Their first obstacle in the classroom was the parents, most of which did not believe them able to teach and help their children in such a difficult age as adolescence; but they, like so many other young people in the country, managed to prove their preparation, disposition and confidence.
To Leyvis it was a little more difficult that for the others, because she and another Valiente had to face a group “and at the beginning each day´s work was scary. Nevertheless, we were adapting ourselves and we managed to prove we were worth to be trusted, up to the point that many parents were grateful as for we did for their children”.
To other people it was less complex, Ernesto confesses: “I, for example, had the opportunity to work with an experienced professor and that helped me a lot to be related to the group and face up to the kids”.
Many parents recognized that these inexperienced young people were persistent and daring in their social work. “At first”, comments Yisenia, “it was common that the children missed some classes; and when we were to visit them to know why, it was usual to find them even in a roof building a pigeon house. Later they understood that it was not worth the pain to remain, because we were always going to fetch them, and I believe this was determining in many cases for the parents really understood why we had invaded the classrooms and which our mission was”.
They had there some sad experiences, but also moving and beautiful. For example, they all will always remember the opportunity to talk to Fidel, to greet him and interchange ideas about this project. Besides, Hailier kepps proudly his memories about the Fourth International Congress of Science, where he could exchange opinions with educators from different regions of the world.
Eventually they all returned to their native land to distribute to perseverance and education lavishly. The challenge has also been great for Leyvis and Ernesto: besides the beginning of their professional life and the responsibility towards the students, it was a challenge to work next to their old high school professors.
“If something has helped us, it was that the former principal of Hubert de Blanck High School accustomed all the academic staff to try us as if we were older professors”, confesses Leyvis. "For example, to me it was a very great challenge to see Gloria Ferreiro, but most of all to think that years back she had been was my prof”. Graduated in 2007 with a Gold Title, Leyvis is now a principal professor of eighth grade in the same.
Yisenia, on the other hand, began as a professor in 28 of Januaryhigh School, and from October 2008 fulfills the function of integral supervisor. “This responsibility demands me to be better prepared, that´s true, but I always do my best,” she emphasizes.
When graduating, Hailier had the opportunity to choose where to begin to work, and he chose the Country High School of the Pozo Blanco community, an establishment with different characteristics from the other centers in which he had worked until that moment. “And I do not regret, this has been a wonderful experience. Here, as in Havana, whenever I stand in front of a classroom or I share with my students, I understand truly why it was necessary that we appeared in Cuban teaching and why I never regret the decision I made almost seven years ago”, indicates Hailier, now a head of departament.
They all agree in one thing: they can´t imagine their days in another way anymore, teaching has grabbed them completely. “It is beautiful to be in front of a class, mainly when you discover the desire to learn in so many eyes staring you. And when a constant interaction with the students is obtained, the relationship becomes still more special, because you realize you can really help them to go forward, or at least to try hard to do it it”, Ernesto says. He is the only one of these four youngsters that is surrounded by its students in a classroom every day and discover them next to him, growing by the life.
They are still young, but enthusiastic, well prepared and enthusiastic, worthy of admiration and respect. And although others like them walk along the path of the General Integral High School Professors, founded at the beginning of the first decade of 2000, “Los Valientes” will be always something a kind of symbol of perseverance and disposal, to those that daily, in spite of their youth, face up to the responsibility of teaching and understanding our teenagers in any corner of the Cuban archipelago.
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