A program to close schools was
announced a week before Thanksgiving in the city. The Governor announced that
it would close at least 30 schools but he was expecting a revision of the Educational Council, because
the number, far from being minor, could reach at least 50 schools.
Teachers, parents and children took the
streets to protest. Sometimes there were protests against our school. The
children began to ask that they would make if they closed the school. Sometimes
our Director tried to give explanations that ended in a face of doubt about the
future.
It was curious, when there is not
enough money, Education suffers the consequences, it was like if the State thought it’s not
worth investing in children and public schools. But even when I attended
private schools, I had begun to see one of many problems of the education: It does
not focus on learning ability, but on the resources that are invested and in
this sense, I didn’t feel bad by the Governor, or by the directors of the
schools, but children who would end up suffering the consequences of the
mistakes of others.
A day before Thanksgiving long weekend,
I told children that we should each thank for what each wanted, and I gave
thanks for having the great honor and pleasure of being with them.
Their faces focused on me, and each one
was taking turn to talk while all of them to listen carefully every word...
- Thanks for having a school to study, but above all, for having a teacher who let me laugh.
- Thanks because my parents let me study, they say that girls don't deserve to go to school, because when they grow they get married.
- Thanks because my dad was not angry at me yesterday when I told him that I want to be an astronaut.
- Thanks because my brother lent me his math book.
- Thanks that the plants grew and we won in the science fair Blue Ribbon.
- Thanks because my dog ate the note that music teacher gave me by distracting during class the other day. But I don't blame a dove crossing out the window.
- Thanks God for not giving fleas to my cat, my father said that if he sees a flea my cat will leave our house.
- Thanks because my classmates never scoff from my.
- Thanks for the sandwich that my mom prepared me every day.
- Thanks for the Turkey that mom will prepare and because the army allowed my brother to come to visit us.
- Thanks because the doctors cured my mom.
- Thanks for the new job of my dad.
- Thanks because my mom has not been sad for several weeks.
- When I believed that Isabella was not going to speak, she took her turn and said:
- Thanks because I already learned that I am capable of doing things that everyone said that I could not.
That afternoon I took a taxi to go to
the airport to enjoy the holidays with my family. Children's words rang in my
ears and I thanked for all those sandwiches that my mother prepared me when I
went to school, by the employment of my father, because I never had a cat with
fleas and despite having all the resources that my father and his empire could
give me, I didn’t fall in something really spooky.
I realized that no matter whether you
are rich or poor, a student is always vulnerable to the designs of Education,
which aims to determine the future of each one, but at the end, every one is owner of our own destiny.
When I arrived at the exit of the
airport, I was ready to search how to take a taxi, when I saw my mother’s
driver, as formal as always since I was a child. He was always who took me to
school wearing his black uniform, with those same English manners, but today I
stopped by to see his face, and no doubt
it had changed. As I became a man, he had aged, and I noticed that I knew nothing about his
family.
This time, I sat in the front seat and
talked with him about his family and thanked him for so many years of loyal
service and everything that had been done by my family, especially my mother.
When we got home, my mother opened the
door and hugged me as if I were going
to give her a pink diamond ring. I thanked her for all she
had done for me, and kiss her, like when I was a child.
My father was working in his Studio and
by very first time, I heard saying to his partner: "wait a minute, I’ll
call on Monday, my son came home". I thanked him for never losing his job, not being
angry with me when I told him that I wanted to be a public school teacher, to
which he replied me with a smile that he
rarely exhibits: "who said I was not angry?
Thanking took sense that day, I
remembered when I was a child I saw on television a child so poor that it
seemed that he would die of hunger. I told my mother that if one day I found a
poor street child, I would invite him to eat at home, but there was no poor
children around the places we use to
attended, so I thought that those kids didn't exist.
After dinner, I gave my mother all gifts
that children's parents had made for her, and I asked her if she remembered my
idea of inviting a poor child to eat at home, and she told me since then, she supported
UNICEF in its fight against child poverty with a donation that had my name.
I thanked my parent for the person I
am, and I explained them why thanking had to be action and not a tradition.
I invited my parents to Jamba Juice
next day,, and I asked a tasteless smoothie and told my parents about my days
as a teacher, and we did not stop laughing throughout the afternoon. I thanked
them for letting me make my own mistakes, which now had a special sense.