Perhaps Ligia Magdalena Sales Garrido does not realize it, but she is full of aphorisms, truths, and sentences that slip into her words. "I am a teacher, first and foremost I am a teacher;” "Anyone who does not love to teach is not a good teacher;" or "The best thing when we learn something, is to give it to others" are some of the maxims that she leaves in her oral gait, just with the wisdom of someone loyal to her childhood games, to her mother and her beginnings, at the age of 10, as a literacy teacher.
Professor Emeritus of the University of Las Tunas, tenured researcher, Master in Didactics of Spanish and Literature, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, tenured teacher and researcher, as well as consultant... the curriculum of this woman who, despite her vital and fruitful career, feels that her greatest merit is only valued in what she has given in each class and, in essence, in what she has received.
"More than any title I may possess, I am a teacher. A teacher because I enjoy it when I teach and when my students can learn and apply something I taught them," she says as we talk about that process in which nothing is indifferent because every action of the educator adds or subtracts.
The designer of the program and textbooks for the Special Education course, who accompanied her students from the Enrique José Varona University of Pedagogical Sciences to exhibitions, museums, and theatre performances, knows this because "the educator is a trainer and culture is an all-encompassing concept", "because the teaching of language, of Spanish, is for interaction, human communication" and, in this way, the disciples had enrichment of their knowledge and, later, the possibility of writing lively, vivid, profound texts.
"On their return, the texts produced were analyzed in class and we looked at everything related to the application of grammatical structures, the formation of the paragraph, and the central idea". So were their turns at the Panorama de la cultura tunera, a celebration and homage to the essence of this land, in sport, science, art, literature, and cuisine.
"We have to fight for the integral education we need, especially for the young people who will later become educators and work with our children and adolescents in secondary schools," she summarizes, with the special vision of someone who is part of the biography of so many lives and enjoys, even more, that each of these existences is integrated into her own.
Ligia sees education as a tree: a seed is sown and opens up into many branches. "Whoever doesn't love teaching is not a good teacher, that's the first thing. You have to love what you do and feel satisfaction for what you have passed on to others. I have always said that I get paid for doing what I love. There is no greater recognition than that which comes from a pupil when he or she thanks you for what you have taught.
"As pedagogues, we must not be lacking in education and training, we must make the most of the possibilities of each subject and time to train. It is also necessary to know how to combine tenderness and firm direction; that is the starting point. Everything you learn must be passed on to others; you don't research yourself, but so that this knowledge can be passed on to others. Martí said it: 'On coming to earth, every man has the right to be educated, and then in return, the duty to contribute to the education of others'. "
Daughter of fertile times, of vertiginous work, it is difficult to summarize in a few lines the development of this teacher who worked as such, even without a degree, when she helped many federated girls to reach the sixth grade. "With a teaching record, I started teaching Spanish at the Secundaria Obrera. Then I trained to teach in primary education and later in secondary education; once I had completed this stage, I entered the Spanish Literature degree program, right here in Las Tunas, where there was a Holguín branch".
An avid researcher, she has expressed her commitment to science and education in countless articles published in national and international journals and in several books such as La comunicación y los niveles de la lengua, Comprensión, análisis y construcción de textos, La didáctica del Español en la Educación Especial, the compilation Didáctica comunicativa para las Ciencias Médicas and the volume El enfoque cognitivo, comunicativo y sociocultural en la enseñanza de la lengua y la literatura, as co-author.
In this desire to open windows and doors to knowledge, she argues that "the teacher has to be a teacher, it is essential; that is why each of the books I have written are based on learning to teach and to transmit what is known. It is essential, when we learn something, to give it back to others", and he says this with gentleness, with the devotion of someone who, in each class, tries to offer his pupils the best of his human work. "I am happy when I perceive and feel that my students have learned something", and he reiterates the idea like a mantra, the route of a long exercise of transcendence.
Since 2012, she has been experiencing this joy in the classrooms of the University of Las Tunas, which welcomed her back to the world of teaching. "As it is what I like to do and I enjoy it, I decided to do it and here I am, transmitting the little I know and have acquired with a lot of study.
"The most important thing for me is to teach, that is my fulfillment, fulfilled when I see that they learn". She speaks of teaching as a privilege, in which perhaps the greatest merit is having had so many students from whom she has learned; in what she sees as "a chain that never breaks learning and teaching, teaching and learning".
Hers, she stresses, "is the most beautiful profession in the world" Faced with this substantive teacher and the truth of her teaching, I remember López de Vega and conclude: "He who has tried it, knows it".
