Brenda runs to her mother; she seeks her company. All around her, there is a buzz of excitement, contagious throughout the whole of the Antillean Cayman Islands. The little girl in uniform starts second grade and has mixed feelings about the September morning. On the one hand, she will miss the trips to the countryside, the baths in the river and the beach, and on the other, she is "happy to see her teacher and her classmates."
In Las Tunas, as in all of Cuba, it is a day of celebration; every family experiences it in similar but different ways. Some are starting school for the first time, others are continuing; some go with more enthusiasm, and those are already waiting for the calendar to run out so that, once again, those two months of rest and fun can arrive. As a rule, without molds, everyone, or almost everyone, is looking forward to meeting up with friends and teachers, learning, and experiencing days that are just as stimulating, if not more so, than those of the past two months.
The start of the school year in the more than 600 educational centers in the province was experienced this week with more or less similar postcards. And it was not the result of improvisation, but of a very calculated work of preparation by the authorities of the sector, the Party, and the Government, at all levels, which returned to this stage of books and notebooks, not without shortcomings, but with the certainty of raising the will to teach and to acquire knowledge, over and above the difficulties. The essential has not gone unnoticed either by families who, faced with the rising cost of material living, have squeezed their coffers with a view to this day of shared dreams.
At home, the previous days were spent running around buying socks, shoes, backpacks... lining books and notebooks, adapting school clothes to the body measurements of each girl or boy, and, in other cases, looking for one that fits the "growth spurt" of our offspring; while thinking about and guaranteeing a snack, a difficult task for these times. And there is no great distance between this reality and that experienced by the pedagogues, parents, or grandparents, who live their days with intensity and anxiety. They hold the future in their hands, they know it and we thank them for their work of love.
All of this was in the air when Brenda reached her mother, Yairelis Cobas Peña, an educator at the Julián Santana Santana semi-school, who was walking around with her fourth-grade pupils like a hen with her chicks last Monday morning.
"Each course is a new challenge to show what we can do as teachers, to give the students the best of ourselves, which is to teach them, educate them, and prepare them for life and the future", she commented to 26 almost at the start of the Provincial Act of the official opening of the school term for more than 80,000 students and nearly 11,000 teachers, together with the support staff for the teaching activity."
Noel Peña and Wilmer Utria, Yairelis' first-grade students, were anxious and expectant: "I like school and I learn a lot, I'm good at it, especially Maths," commented the latter of this beautiful duo, while his friend spoke of how much they missed their teachers and the joy of being reunited with Maikol and Daniela, their classmates."
Samira Bernal told us that she will now have a new teacher, although she has not forgotten Delmis and Yuliet who accompanied her in third grade. Ánika de la Caridad and Dixan Enrique Jorge were also eager to take part in this initiation ritual; she was eager to participate in the cultural activities, and he was eager to take part in the sporting activities.
Day zero of the school year, the beginning also harbored the loving desire of grandparents and parents to see their children become useful men and women, as expressed in the words of mother Liliana Rodríguez; sentiments that Eduardo Villamil ratified in his "support to the school in the care of the study materials and in the support to the collective in any need."
For Nilser Piñeda Cruz, provincial director of Education, the start of the 2023-2024 school year is a victory and a stage of challenges and achievements in which more than 300 new teachers will leave their mark, graduating from the schools for this training.
"The University will also hold a graduation in December, which will allow more than 600 educators to join the campuses, in addition to the fact that a good number of them are in the course for workers and will soon be graduates."
"In addition, we have already carried out the process of teacher categorization for better preparation, at the level of the Third Improvement of the National Education System," explained the director.
In his words, he also stated that, although this course is the first in Cuba to resume the 46 teaching weeks, Las Tunas has already lived this experience since the period 2022-2023, because despite the stumbling blocks of the pandemic, each school stage has been carried out here.
As always, since the dawn of January 1959, education has opened up infinite possibilities without geographical or other distinctions. Happy return to the classroom; may every school be a space for the knowledge and spiritual growth of children and youth, may every teacher be a guide, and every pupil be an avid disciple on the road to learning about the world. Welcome to the time of learning. September has magic, charm..., it leaves traces.
