Search This Blog

Thursday, May 23, 2013

20 Thanking is an action, not a tradition

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.

No comments: