Teacher, mother
Parables and Illustrations for Values Education |
Maritza was a teacher who never surrendered. The companions used to call her "rescuer of lost causes", as always asked to give students more impossible and problematic an opportunity.
One day he told me how was impressed to hear the story of that prior constructed a luminous room, facing a dreamlike landscape, where the monks who were sad or depressed by the fouls committed were carried in his monastery. That room was decorated only with a few posters who had taped in large letters these words: TE AMO such as you are. In that room was strictly forbidden any thought or meditation outside this topic: «God loves me infinitely, tenderly. God loves me as I am".
Maritza told me that if God we always loved unconditionally, as we were, she tried to do the same with their students. «I love you as you are», used to say, and with patience, affection and leaving in their small hands and increasing responsibilities, was showing them his affection and faith in them.
One day, he received an invitation from a former student, Victor, who repeatedly begged him to go to his graduation. "I hope, MOM, that you remember me. I was that terrible boy who would throw the school and you accepted me in her room and gave me another opportunity.
Maritza Victor used to call him 'mama' whenever he was with her on the patio or on the street, it was agreed when was not his teacher. He thought if now I went back to call it thus in his invitation, was just so I remember who he was.
Victor had been chosen by their peers to say a few words:
-I want to share the joy of this day with all of you, but especially with my two moms. Yes, do not be surprised, I have two breasts that I love and both made me the extraordinary gift of being here with me today. Hope MOM gave me body life, left his youth by scrubbing floors and washing clothes so I grow healthy and strong. I love her with all my heart and I owe to her life. MOM Maritza, my teacher, I gave birth as a person, I gave birth to a life with meaning, fed my heart, believed in me more than I believed in myself, and why I am here. Without it, it would have possibly been a Slacker, a rogue and God knows where he would be at the moment. Therefore, I want to hear it in front of all of you that if I called her and I will call «Mamá», was not by game, but because thus consider it to be. They now understand why I started saying I have two mommies.
The best gift that we can do for others is our "unconditional" acceptance of them. As we have already stated on other occasions, the first pedagogical principle, base of all others, is to love students. Love each and every one of them, especially those who have more shortcomings and difficulties. Love them as they are, patiently, lovingly hopeful, who never resigned to failure, which is always willing to give a new opportunity. As you know and feel wanted, there's hope. In this sense, and as Fernando Savater wrote in his work the value of educating: "Since the earliest childhood, the main motivation of our social attitudes is not the desire to be loved (even though this both us conditions too), nor nor the desire to love (which only seduces us in our best moments), but fear to be loved by those who have more for us". Hence, and are also words of Savater, «the educational effort is always rebellion against fate, revolt against the fatum: education is the antifatalidad, not the arrangement scheduled to it». One becomes what is by education or lack thereof. How many wonderful people who today fear would be if they had found a true master!
To educate is to start victims to the crime, non-life. It is giving life, triumph over death.