We want Carmela, one of the characters of the movie and a real life teacher in Havana, to become an example, that all teachers in our country to be like her. This is also the goal of the teachers staff in the teacher training school Nicolás Guillén Batista, in Camagüey. The first graduation of students in this school, after the re-opening of these institutions in 2010, will occur next July. These centers were closed for 15 years.

Nearly 500 young teachers, specialized in different branches of education, will start teaching in several schools around the province, starting in September. One of these young teachers is Amarili Brizuela Verdecia, a young girl that has not reached the age of twenty but, nevertheless, has already decided what she wants to devote her life to.

Is your real wish to teach?

I asked Amarili, because there are a lot of teenagers who take this choice because they have no other.

"I always wanted to teach. My mom is a teacher and thanks to her I got interested in this profession. It gives me a lot of pleasure to teach children to read and write; and to know that I play an important role in their futures and that they will never forget what I am going to teach them".

"After I entered the teacher training school I truely realized that this was my calling. I spent four years there and I think I learned a lot. I had excelent teachers and I learned different subjects such as pedagogy and psicology, that help me to communicate better with my students, to understand and help them better with their specific characteristics, to be able to pay attention to their problems and make them improve their skills".

She tells us that her family supported her all the time, and she thinks that family support is very important: "Parents should leave their children to choose the profession they want, according to their likes. I feel that my profession is one of the most important in the whole world, because without teachers there will be no engineers, arquitects, doctors..."

The real challenge is that you have to keep on learning and improving. It does not matter how well prepared I am, I have to keep studying to be able to answer all the questions of my students".

Until September Amarili will not start working as a teacher in a classroom, but she has been in direct contact with children since her second year in the teacher training school.

"I remember very well that day in which I faced a classroom for the first time and they called me teacher. I was very nervous because I was affraid of saying something wrong. It was very important to me and I felt proud of myself".

"I do not forget either an experience I had in Oscar Primelles primary school, where I performed the scholar practices. There I had a student that every day arrived to the classroom crying and did not want to speak to anybody. Day by day I earned his trust and I found out that the problem was that his parents argued every day and he never slept because of that. He did not bring any snack to school, so I always shared mine with him. I even collected some clothes in my neighborhood and gave them to him. Now, wherever he sees me, he greets me and calls me -teacher-".

"To be a teacher is something very beautiful. I arrive home every day with a different story to tell". She told me this, and then she took me to the second floor of the primary school Enrique José Varona, in Julio Antonio Mella neighborhood, best known as ¨La Anexa¨, and intoduced me to her kids, to which she has been teaching during four months along with her tutor Blanca Montero Monasterio.

The children do not lie

The students and I had a conversation, there in the classroom, alone, so their teachers would not influence their answers. They told me that their teacher Amarili is going to do her final test (to teach a lesson) in that class, and that they will behave properly because she is very good, teaches them a lot and plays with them. They say that they like traditional games and puzzles.

Some of them say they want to be teachers as well. Daniela, I think, told me she wants to be a teacher to be remembered by her students in the way she remembers her teachers.

¿How would you not like your teachers to be? I asked. Hands up, Alicia, Melissa, Dayaris, Abel, Amelia, Anabel, Leonardo, Rocío, Annelis, Damilsis, Yenifer, surprised me with answers like: "We do not like them to not come to class, to come unprepared or late. We do not want them to embarrase us or to be rude with us".

Amarili is not like that, that´s why she earned their love and respect, besides, her tutor, Blanca, has a positive opinion about her: "She studied here until the sixth grade, and she always wanted to be a teacher. She likes what she does and puts her heart on it. She has been visited from the University of Pedagogical Sciences and she has achieved good results. She has never been absent. I am certain that she will graduate with very good marks. We want her to work here".

After the graduation, this girl and her classmates will have the opportunity to study a major in education. But before that they will have to pass a course to level their skills before they apply for the tests to enter the University of Pedagogical Sciences José Martí in May 2015.

I do not know a lot about Amarili, only what she told me in the interview, but I trust in the children and in her tutor, and I believe she has set her mind and soul in this profession.

I also know that all the 496 students that will graduate on July 10th, are not like her. Perhaps they got there by chance and they will like the profession in the future, or they will simply keep the title at home as a souvenir. All of them are not excelent, but some of them are, so, I think it was worthy, because Cuba needs good teachers today.

Translated by Yenia Rodriguez (Student of Languages)

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