In this post, I will be brief. As one of the speakers invited to the IV International Conferences on Diversity held at Florida Universitaria said, “merely having children does not make us parents.”
This irrefutable truth made me reflect. I immediately thought that this maxim could also be applied to the school environment, at any stage: Early childhood education, primary, secondary… In that sense, if merely having children does not make us parents, merely having students does not automatically make us teachers.
Being a parent and being a teacher implies something more than a category or a social position; it is not a throne from which to observe, judge, or give orders. Being true parents, just like being true teachers, is an exercise in courage; it is fighting daily, making decisions, running, struggling, worrying, but also guiding, leading, accompanying, listening…
This very brief post is for those parents and those teachers who are aware of their responsibility.
A new school year has ended, and it is time to review mistakes and successes, learn from the former and congratulate ourselves on the latter, because it has not been easy at all.
Nor did anyone say it would be easy. In the same vein as I mentioned before, educating takes courage. It is not something that is decided upon. We cannot decide when we are educating and when we are not. For children, teachers or education professionals, parents and mothers are representatives of the adult world.
Educating is everyone’s business. Children look for role models in their immediate environment. If they do not find them at school or in the family, they will find them on television, on the Internet, and on social media.
In a world where everything seems new to them, they need something to hold on to, attitudes to imitate, reflections that help them understand who they are and why. Life is also an obstacle course for them.
That is why I reiterate, I insist. Now that a new cycle is closing, a cycle marked by the school year, by adversity, it is time to reflect, to congratulate ourselves, and to be critical of ourselves, understanding “critical” in the best sense of the word: to be critical to continue growing, to be critical to overcome ourselves, to be critical to be better. This attitude, this desire to be better (better teachers, better parents), will necessarily have an impact on new generations.
This post is a congratulation to all those brave individuals who strive every day to be better parents and better teachers. This post is intended to remind them that they are not alone.
Let’s transform differences into opportunities together
