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Alma Rocío D.

by Hector from Tampico

MY HERO

What I don´t understand is how a child´s mind keeps memories of some people for ages, and then, he feels joy remembering them.

Alma Rocío was an elementary teacher in the early sixties who was born in a little town called Atlisco, Puebla, México. When she came along to work at our town in Guanajuato, she was hardly twenty. With her long black hair, brown eyes and dark clear skin, Alma Rocío seemed like a native princess from the old lands of México. Alma Rocío besides being so pretty, gained the empathy from many people around; people only needed to be close to her awhile and it was easy to understand how smart and sure of herself she was.

I know that when you are ten or eleven years old, it´s impossible to have a good mind to understand something like this. I was certain that both teachers and kids admired all her qualities and skills and, of course, all her pupils like me, fell in love this wonderful teacher.

Alma Rocío came to our elementary school to teach fifth grade, and at first sight, she seemed so strict and in fact she was like that. You could always see her working in her classroom and of course all her pupils were so quiet, which was really incredible because each grade had around thirty-five restless children.

One young, new teacher, who spoke extremely seriously with older teachers, even discussing with her strong opinions most times, was a person that does did get mad at the people that surrounded her and all this was Alma Rocío.

On the other hand, this teacher always demonstrated that she knew a lot of Math, Geography, History and things like that, and the best, she knew about a lot of sports. What good is it, if a person has so much knowledge and yet he does not have the ability to transmit them? To Alma Rocío it was not difficult to transmit her knowledge, and besides she had the ability to do this to children who were interested in learning and in the same way, she made them try harder for things, which they desired to learn.

This teacher seemed ugly but she was beautiful, seemed simple but she was intelligent, seemed foolish but she was strict, seemed weak but she was of strong character. She awakened a great envy in many teachers but she gained the respect and the admiration of a lot more persons. I think she was a controversial teacher.

I was so lucky when I went to the fifth elementary degree and even more when I went to the sixth elementary degree. Alma was my teacher again. I will never forget when this teacher decided to be our coach for soccer and our team won the championship and, even more, she was our coach when we played basketball and baseball, which was amazing.

All my classmates and I felt pride having this “teacher”, and always I wondered how a girl would be able to know so much about teaching sports.

Things like this, with a person who always encouraged me to do and to reach my goals, made me realize that Alma Rocío was an incredible teacher for me.

This was the first time that I have written something about a person, whose image entered in my mind, like those memories that will always be with us throughout our life.

I have never talked about this with anybody, I have never said anything, I have never told her the kind of feelings she seeded inside my heart, but now, I recognize SHE IS MY HERO.

Page created on 7/12/2009 12:00:00 AM

Last edited 7/12/2009 12:00:00 AM

The beliefs, viewpoints and opinions expressed in this hero submission on the website are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, viewpoints and opinions of The MY HERO Project and its staff.