I can remember very clearly all the good teachers I’ve had over the years. When I was 8, I had the most amazing Math teacher, she made me fell in love with numbers, and although I ended up studying Communication, to this day I enjoy working with numbers, and teaching others how numbers can be fun.
When I was 11, it was my English teacher who rocked. He taught us how to analyze books, how to write, and how to create stories from zero. He rearranged the class so we could all sit in a circle and comment about what we were reading, what we were writing, and what music we loved. To this day I have copies of the books he made us read, and copies of the stories we wrote in class.
When I was 14, I had the most amazing World History and World Geography teacher. He really knew how to get us to enjoy listening to history or geography. One of the biggest projects we had with him, was drawing a map of a continent the size of a classroom whiteboard. The map had to include countries, capitals, rivers, mountains, etc. We drew for days! and we had a ton of fun.
I had a few amazing teachers, a lot of mediocre ones, and a few really bad teachers. At the time, I only saw the cool ones, as cool, and the mediocre ones, as regular teachers. But now, I can see how big the difference is between a ‘cool’ one and a ‘regular’ one. If all my teachers had been as amazing as my cool teachers, I would have probably wanted to be a teacher myself.
I’ve always loved teaching, and I got the opportunity to do it a few years ago, teaching English and Math to children. Now I realize the only things I taught, were the ones I learned from the best.
All of these memories came to me a few days ago while I was editing a reel for a friend who is an actor, and I remembered a teacher in college saying ‘he didn’t care if we hired somebody to do the editing of our projects, because in real life we would probably hire somebody anyways’. I’m so glad I ignored that comment, and I’m so glad my friends ignored that comment too. Now, I can produce short films on my own, and I can make money editing reels. If I had followed his advice, I would have never been able to complete a project without needing to hire people for each of the tasks.
I’m really glad I had the opportunity to have some amazing teachers, and I’m really glad I learned to ignore the mediocre ones. The worst thing you can have in a third world country, is mediocre teachers, telling children how to be mediocre.
So, in order to compensate some of the not-so-good teachers in college, I started with a few friends a group in which students taught other students the subjects they loved the most around film making or anything related to Communication. We are ‘La Liga de Comunicación‘, and although we haven’t had the time to get together lately, we still have a ton of people interested in attending some of the talks, and people from other countries writing to us, wanting to start similar projects in their own universities.
Thank you amazing teachers, for inspiring us to be better, and for inspiring us to continue with the cause!