By Isabel Gonzalez

HAVANA TIMES – A month ago, the school year began, bringing with it notebooks, textbooks without covers, uniforms, white socks, backpacks, dark circles under our eyes in the morning, long hours waiting for transportation to get to school, morning assemblies, and saluting the flag.

One of the things I was looking forward to most was reuniting with my friends. After months apart, it was worth going back just to sit together, talk about anything and everything, and laugh at the slightest thing. Unfortunately, there are responsibilities too. We also have to study.

The problem is that there are subjects for which we have no teacher. It’s not that the teacher is sick for a day or has some problem. There simply isn’t one. For other subjects, someone has been assigned, but to give just one example, the math teacher comes into the classroom, asks us to take pictures of some sheets of paper with notes and exercises, and then leaves.

I suppose we’re a privileged generation (note the irony). We have the photographic teaching method. Perhaps there’s already some pedagogy textbook I don’t know about that recommends: “Take a picture of the material, send it to the students, and leave the classroom.”

I consider myself a good student. I may not be brilliant in every subject, but I’m among the best. I catch on quickly when someone knowledgeable explains something to me. The problem is that I haven’t yet developed the ability to understand an entire subject from a photographed sheet of paper.

Perhaps I lack talent. I recognize that when it comes to learning, I have different abilities from other people. Or perhaps the answer is simpler: I’m missing a teacher.

A week after the school year began, the top-performing students in eleventh grade were summoned to the principal’s office. They needed us to go to the local middle school to cover certain subjects. We would serve as substitute teachers.

I was assigned Physics. I accepted because it’s a subject I like and am good at. Besides, I wanted to know what it felt like to be on the other side of the classroom.

On the first day, I walked in carrying an eighth-grade textbook and a lesson plan that the middle school administration had lent me. My legs were trembling, but I pulled myself together. Stage fright isn’t really my thing.

The students were three years younger than me, but when I stood in front of them, I felt older. That day, they didn’t just hand me an attendance book; they gave me the enormous responsibility of teaching.

I liked it. They listened, asked questions, and I was able to explain a few things to them. When I noticed they understood, something resembling satisfaction stirred in my chest. During those forty-five minutes, I thought that perhaps one day I could devote myself to teaching.

Then I remembered that I’m also a student, that I still need to learn, and that those children and I deserve more than a percentage of class hours reported as completed in some ministry office.

That’s why I decided not to go back. I explained it to my teachers, and although they weren’t entirely happy about it, they had to accept my decision. I don’t think it’s fair that those children should have to depend on other students to receive an education that ought to be guaranteed by trained adults.

How can it be that an eleventh-grade student has to become a substitute teacher when she’s still trying to receive an education herself? It’s as if a hospital were short of doctors and decided to put the healthiest patients in charge of caring for the others.

The worst part is that this doesn’t just affect grades. It affects what you imagine for your future. I have goals. I want to learn, study, create things, and explore other possibilities. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult not to wonder how far I can go if I constantly have to fill in, on my own, the gaps left by the system.

There are days when I get depressed. I think my abilities will remain trapped here, that I’ll never be able to reach my full potential. My mother encourages me. She tells me not to think that way, to look ahead, keep studying, work hard, and not lose faith.

I try. I keep studying. I’m not going to let the lack of teachers and the mediocre education system in the country where I live force me to settle for less. It’s just that in Cuba, looking ahead is like being on a highway and watching the bridges disappear on the horizon. You know where you want to go; the hard part is finding a way to get there.

Read more from the diary of Isabel Gonzalez here on Havana Times.