CAMAGÜEY. - Once I listened that the world was like an enormous bookstore full with biographies. Some more transparent and open; others more hidden but surprising. To leaf through the least famous pages and to approach the details of their protagonists is an effective way of growing. Many are the anonymous histories that deserve to be known; that of Julia Tabío is one of them.

Jaronú, in Esmeralda, was the town where she was born. There, in spite of the material lacks, it was where she first valued the importance of love and to give to the others. To grow with her nine brothers demonstrated that. On having finished the sixth grade, she knew of the possibility of studying to be a teacher, and did not doubt it.

“When the offers came I filled the charts myself, and even signed for my dad. I knew that it was not well, but I risked, I could not let the opportunity to go. Months later, they communicated to me that I was approved and it was in this moment when I said in the house that I had registered”.

And although nothing serious happened for her bravery and her parents supported her, to travel to Ciego de Ávila for the beginning period did not turn out to be easy to her. That camp served her to learn of teaching, but also it taught her, ways of acting and of behaving in the life. The girl that mom combed and even washed her hair had to grow rapidly.

“Later we entered in the school of teachers' formation, located in La Larga, Florida. The majority of us were boys without resources, we were studying with the little that we had, but we were happy. We knew that it was a big task, a task of big”, added the teacher.

To her 43 years of experience, Julia does not forget that it was of the first ones in dressing the green uniform in the Forming School, nor her step along the school Granma in Camagüey, and much less the date of graduation in 1975.

After two years of practice, a wedding, a change for Florida and a deplorable divorce, Tabío returned. “The first thing that I did when I returned to the city was to work at the music school as a fourth grade teacher. That one was a period of both professional and personal self-improvement. She did not know yet that she was pregnant”.

Twenty-four years this teacher dedicated the pioneers of the elementary school Emilio Lorenzo Luaces. She tells that she owes practically everything to this center and its people. “The directors that I had were those who gave to me, as it is said around, the final touch. They were very demanding and I was always trying to learn and to ask about everything”.

Today she works at "Renato Guitart" with fifth grade. It is a pleasure to enter her classroom of the second floor. I do not remember to have been attended earlier so well by a few children. They all wanted to speak about the teacher, that one that does not reject any space to teach; that one that knows strong realities, and in spite of it she always achieves smiles.

“We work with children who have problems in the hearth. We know that not all the parents are worried and that the external factors do not influence any cases positively. It is not that I am better that nobody, but I always try to do of the school an agreeable place, a peace space. To distinguish where we are needed the most is our responsibility”.

Julia says that to achieve it is not to sew and to sing. To join about 25 different characters in the same place and to sit down to hope that everything should happen by itself, it is almost impossible. To educate the new generations has never been easy, but she makes sure that the love and the patience are the answers.

“Every day I am more satisfied of my step along this ground. I believe that to form children and to turn them into good men and women is a big gift to the humanity, to the history. That's why I always advise to the teachers who start that they must study and be prepared well. It is very bad to stop in front of a classroom to improvise”.

The daily preparation about which Julia speaks can be verified of one glance her table in the classroom. The maps, the books, the graphs and the notebooks to check almost snatch all her place. The smile of the children, their ways of expressing themselves, of acting, fill her soul.

“One does not convince the child lifting the voice nor ill-treating him, but talking, listening to his reasons. To educate in values is not difficult when you teach with your own experience, with your form. You transmit what you are. If you come every day with a smile in the face that will be reflected”.

Almost in the farewell she confessed to me that Heart is her head book. In the lines of Edmundo de Amicis, she finds the best formulae. Every day reads in class a fragment and debates on values and feelings. Perhaps that's why I imagine that when the years pass through and we read again the book of life of the teacher Julia, we will know why so many people have inside a little piece of her other heart.

• Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez