The passion for Mathematics led Harold Urgellés Sayú in front of a classroom, as well as the desire to be useful. The fourth-year student in Industrial Engineering, from the workers' meeting course at the University of Guantánamo, today works at the Regino Eladio Boti Basic High School, and contributes to alleviate the situation in the municipality with the availability of teachers.
At 28 years old, Harold feels proud to pay tribute to the training of the new generations, which is also a way of continuing the Revolution.
“Now it depends on me whether new teachers, engineers, doctors, workers arise… and although I am not an educator, I assume the challenge with great responsibility.
“In addition, I have to teach Mathematics, my favorite subject of all my life, which allows me to develop the capacity for analysis and discernment, logical reasoning, and intellect. Numbers are present in nature and in society, we depend on them to count, measure, buy, when organizing ourselves at home, distributing time or resources.
“It is a wonderful world and that is how we offer it to my students, so that they feel attracted to the subject and understand it better. For example, these days we study statistics and its basic concepts: the population, sample, average; As motivation I give you examples from practical life: we calculate the classroom grades, we identify data from the territory…”
Harold Urgellés believes that the key to teaching well is individualized and systematic attention.
This is not the first experience as a teacher at Urgellés Sayú, before he worked at the Primero de Mayo pre-university, where he stood out for his results in just two months, there in Máximo Gómez between 11 and 12 South.
“When I heard on TVE that there was a shortage of teachers, I thought: I think I'm going to try to teach and my family encouraged me. I inquired with people from the sector and they immediately opened the doors for me. Then I knew that there were difficulties with Mathematics and I became more motivated.
“Teaching classes is very complicated – he admits – I started with factorial decomposition, I work with variables, problems… from the first day I sat down with the classroom and we agreed to work together to learn better.
“I almost managed to create a circle of interest of fans of Maths, but the proposal came to me to go to another place where my services were more required and I came to the Regino Boti secondary school where today I am happy and I am more useful”, he affirms.
Harold confesses that, although being an educator was not in his plans, while he was in tenth grade he had been a monitor, so being in front of a classroom was not a great challenge for him either.
“The key is in communication, the exchange with the student, in knowing everyone and attending from the most active to the most timid, in addition to achieving more participation, for this I use the technique of oral or written questions and answers. Extra-class tasks are another way of systematizing knowledge because I don't like to start new content without being clear that the majority of the class masters the knowledge that I previously taught.
“To motivate, I also usually use didactic media such as pictures, pictures and other objects that help ground knowledge.
“Today I think my work has been quite effective in the five eighth grade groups that I serve with more than 30 children each. When I arrived they were way behind due to the impact of COVID-19 and the small number of mathematicians (today we are three), but currently we are better off.
“The parents are very happy with me. In the meetings I try to characterize their children so that they know how they should contribute to their formation. If it is someone with outstanding grades, I ask them not to trust themselves and stimulate their intelligence so that it does not decline and in the case of the less outstanding, I explain my willingness to review every day at the end of teaching. I quote the students and work on the elements that affect them.
“Mathematics is a chain in which if we do not know the multiplication table it is impossible to make equations or solve problems, but there is the task of the teacher who must not only teach new knowledge, but also detect gaps in knowledge and settle those debts ”, he details.
When Harold Urgellés is in the classroom, he perceives the brotherhood and the affection that his pupils feel for the young man, whom they do not hesitate to classify as a friend. There are even those who confess to liking Mathematics more.
“That is why I believe that I will continue here as long as they need me, even if next year I will have to take on the challenge of preparing in ninth grade and my thesis at the same time (I am going for the 5th year of my degree); but I know that I will be able to do it because I love what I do. I wish more young people knew firsthand the wonder of educating and decided on the profession full or part time, like me.
“Of course, for this we must demand more and better the work of the teacher, create materials that show their day to day. You have to take care of the work of a teacher because it depends on him to plant the seeds of a better future ”, he concludes.
Text and photos: Dairon Martínez Tejeda