A Word from the Editor

In just about a fortnight another school year will be over and we will be waving farewell to another group of students. What a mixture of emotions, like every other year: sadness and a certain melancholy at the loss of those very good students that have made our mornings or afternoons for a year and whom you will not often see in the next few years , sighs of relief in some other “lost cases” that were never really lost for us. But, we are teachers and we knew that those boys and girls were never “ours” (we just borrowed them for a year) and we knew all along that one day they would be gone. One way or another, we will miss them. Let alone the case of those who will be leaving school for good this year! Those young men and women plunging into real life in a real world , that with very few exceptions, will not be a rose garden. This is a time for self-assessment and reflection. I hope none of us has a cause for regret. Year after year we do the best we can to teach them well, to help them become a little better in the restricted realm of our own subject and, if possible, in life as well, and most importantly, today, I hope we all sure we did our best to teach them how make their voices heard, to defend themselves from corruption, to fight for their rights, to value hard work and life-long study. We chose this profession, and nobody fooled us into thinking this was going to be very different from what it is today. And we are not asking for riches, we only want due respect and proper recognition from the national and provincial authorities (and that includes a dignified salary, of course) and the community at large. Another year is almost over and I know that in our heart of hearts we have made a decision to make our next school year a better one, not for our own sake but for our students´. After all, that´s what we are teachers for. Dr. Omar Villarreal Editor