He states it with certainty: "I was born to be a teacher". The young Luis Daniel Sánchez Ravelo expresses, in this affirmation, a certainty that he has carried since childhood when he admired his teachers, interpreters of pedagogy as instructive as it is admirable.

And he repeats it like a mantra: "It is something I cannot avoid. Ever since I was a child, I have been attracted to teaching. My educators at the semi-boarding school were my paradigms. I always said I wanted to be a teacher and, contrary to the disagreement of some people, I decided to become a teacher."

"I feel, in the first instance, completely fulfilled because I got the career I had longed for", he adds, during a quick and fruitful conversation in which we also talk about his love of voice-over, the realm of the spoken word."

Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Las Tunas, Luis Daniel was recently awarded the Rector's Prize for Outstanding Young Professor. Graduating in 2017 from the House of Higher Studies, he treasures with joy and as an incentive for the current stage, his years of study and leadership in the University Student Federation (FEU by its acronym in Spanish) as Faculty President and vice-president of the organization at the institution.

"I have had moments of longing, of remembering my student years. Now, the professional change has led me to maintain the impetus to bring the teaching of Spanish and Literature to the classroom," he says.

Very active in the dissemination of knowledge related to the world of language, from digital networks, he puts all his efforts into his work as a teacher of Spanish Lexicology and Semantics in the related career and Linguistic Studies of Spanish in Foreign Languages. In this way, he navigates a world of bytes without neglecting the enjoyment of the paper treasures of the Gutenberg era.

"I think that technology cannot replace the printed book. I always insist with my students that there is nothing to replace the conscious reading of a text; the enjoyment of great works of the literary canon such as "Don Quixote", "The Metamorphosis", "And the Kingdom of this World..."

"On the Internet, there is a wealth of information about these works, but nothing replaces or equals the act of reading in intimacy with the work in question. Literature humanizes even the beasts", as a teacher of mine used to say, and as she reiterated to my students."

In addition, Luis Daniel is passionate about language and its analysis from a scientific point of view. His research for his Master's degree in Community Cultural Development, in 2020, was directed in this direction. "Lexical Uses as a mark of Cultural Identity in the Student Community of the Spanish-Literature course" was the name of the project he defended, not by chance, on 20 October, the Day of Cuban Culture. As he says, it was "a way of contributing to cultural studies through language, the sediment of material and immaterial culture."

"Language is our greatest weapon, everything we call linguistic and extra-linguistic reality is based on it", he summarizes."

Unstoppable and with the certainty that "the educator's job is to teach students to see the vitality in themselves", he also shares what he learned at the "Máximo Gómez" Basic Secondary School and is studying for a Doctorate in Educational Sciences. Luis Daniel puts talent and heart into teaching; he has a major task ahead of him: educating is the task of the Titans.