Reflection by Sonia Avilés

REFLECTION NO. 2

Don't let the fear of the difficulty to paralyze you…...

It is impossible to say that in my whole life I have not felt fear to something. When I was little child I used to be afraid of big animals and the darkness of the night; fears that changed as I starting growing. When I was seventeen the lack of money to go to university made me feel unsureness, while all my friends from senior high-school were applying for the best colleges, I was applying for a post in a liquor store. I remember how terrible I felt just to think that I was losing the opportunity to keep studying because my family had not had the economic resources to support my dreams. I do not remember how I overcame each one of those fears, but I am sure they stayed in the past.

Big and difficult challenges always involve at some point insecurity. Every day, every night I am thinking how I can achieve my goals inside the classroom and how I can switch my students´ beliefs about the importance of receiving quality education.

One of my responsibilities as PEM in my school is to take control of unpunctual students and get them into circle readings. Students refuse to read because they find it boring and they are right because they do not find any book interesting. Even more demanding when they cannot perceive or paraphrase the few words inside the heading of a book. Is not a thing to get embarrassed and it is a situation that I noticed until I read the second letter. This circumstance has been changing with baby steps and the sense of possibility will be part of this change through the next three semesters.

I agree with Freire when he wrote “O nos adherimos al estudio como un deleite y lo asumimos como una necesidad y un placer o el estudio es una pura carga, y como tal, la abandonamos en la primera esquina. I think in most of my students is implied this impression, but one remarkable factor is that they have not abandoned their studies.

As the professional I am now, I have become in such a doubtful person all my concerns turn around about how successful I am trying to be. I easily get anxious about situations that I cannot control and I am skeptical about if someday I would ever control them.

“I am skeptical but not paralyzed”…