One of my students, Alan, lives in a house in Villa Itati,
with his mom, five brothers, her sister-in-law and his little nephew.
When he is done helping in the house, he showers and goes out.
He crosses three corridors of the neighborhood.
He climbs a very steep mud slope
and walks the last block to get to school.
He is not going to learn with his mates,
but to line up to get his family's daily meal.
Due to the lockdown the place is closed.
While waiting for the food at the door, he uses the free wifi
to download the assignments his teachers sent him
and send those he's already done.
Today, he borrowed the family's only cell phone
because they knew he would have an Internet connection.
He gladly reads the messages
in which teachers encourage him to continue studying.
And, besides, we also answer his questions.
It's not easy at all for him to study remotely
but at least he has a space where to make his questions.
With empty classrooms opportunities are moving away
and the inequalities
a lot of kids live since a long time ago deepen.
And today they juggle to have access to their right to learn.
Yes, it is true that families and teachers
welcome schools in our homes
and we gave them the shelter they needed to keep on working.
But it's also true that it became more evident than ever
the need to maintain and promote those bonds
the school building used to enable.
When we teachers meet at school
to put together the bags with food
the most important thing for us is to have news, to exchange news,
of the kids from who we don't know anything lately.
We're so alert that, while the bags are delivered,
we go through the line looking for a relative
or anyone else that can deliver some news.
Because of the pandemic some kids went to live with another family
when their parents, or grandparents are hospitalized, or isolated.
If it used to be so hard that many of them
keep their regular assistance in high school,
now our biggest concern is that they don't give up,
that they don't give up the school year.
When the school got into the homes it turned everything upside down.
Valen, for example, is sick of all that video calls,
of this much homework sent by his teachers,
so much, that he asked his mom "make the school go out of my home."
Moms and dads had to change all our routines
to engage even more with our kids' education.
In my case, it was a good thing.
My teenage son, who has attention deficit disorder,
for the first time in his schooling is keeping up to date with his homework.
And, just like Alan, he asks his doubts directly to his teachers.
He learned how to use tools to read and write better.
To him and many young people, to be forced to use technology
helped them create an autonomy they didn't have.
On the other side of the device
my fellow teachers did what they could.
Most of us take care of our families
at the same time as we're working at home,
with scarce resources,
replying to the kids and families at any time of the day,
planning permanently, correcting from screens.
Daniel, for example, is an excellent teacher in the classroom.
But he now feels excluded by the little grasp he has of technology
and how quickly he had to catch up.
At the other end, Alejandra spends her time trying apps,
trying one and a thousand times even when this takes hours on end.
And, also, like in any job,
some choose to wash their hands
and overload others with their work.
That's how the school is today.
Like a virtually dismantled machine.
With all its parts on display.
You can see all the imperfections.
And an emergency operation we could perform with what we had.
It's an old machine. Old and noble.
But it's got a lot of wire-tied parts,
from education reforms,
coming from remote desks far away from the reality of each school.
Schools that, in addition to educating,
were entrusted with a lot of huge responsibilities.
And, as if this were not enough, they were filled up with useless
and tremendously bureaucratic tasks.
Now we all have a unique opportunity,
to put it back together to make it work much better.
We have to give more prominence to kids and young people
to take part and commit to their education.
But also to avoid absurd discussions between adults,
that would be easily solved with asking the kids.
We need to keep families in this loop.
They took over schooling in their homes
and whose active participation is important not to lose
for the school we will go back to.
And, moreover, to call in universities, faculties, social institutions,
from soup kitchen to social clubs,
as part of the social fabric that collaborates
and feeds back from what goes on at school.
I don't know how this is going to look like.
When we reassemble this machine with the pieces we had
and the new tools we have.
But I'm sure that in-person schooling
has to take a super important role
to build better bonds
and not to be wasted
in activities that today we've understood by force
that can be done remotely, or are obsolete.
If we go back to the same school, it means we didn't learn anything.
We owe it to the children, to the teachers, to the families,
who are making a huge effort
to guarantee the right to education.
A really quality education,
that transforms every one of us from affection,
as people we are and as citizens.
We have a unique opportunity that's not going to be given again.
Not even in a hundred years.
The challenge is to live up to it
and take charge of thinking and creating
a better school, together.