Photos: Sergio Betancort
On May 25th, the Viera y Clavijo 2017 medals were awarded in La Gomera, and the winners from the island of Lanzarote, Jesús Toledano and the Unitary Schools, received a well-deserved and emotional tribute on Wednesday night in Teguise, organized by the Island Directorate of Education, which was attended by the entire community of the Rural Schools Collective (CER) of San Bartolomé, Tinajo, and Teguise.
Teachers, directors, and representatives of parents and students from the network of unitary schools in Lanzarote, as well as public representatives, paraded on the stage of the Convent of Santo Domingo, who were in charge of presenting separate awards to the team from the centers of Haría, Tinajo, Yaiza, San Bartolomé, and Teguise.
After the musical performance by Jaira Quartet from Teguise, the island director of Education, Mario Pérez, gave the floor first to Rosa Hernández Auta, a retired teacher who narrated the "vicissitudes and hardships" of rural schools, but also highlighted "the beautiful work that is carried out in them, thanks to the closeness and harmony with the families of the students".
Next, as director of the CER, Sebastián Acosta Luján (Chano), highlighted in his speech "how the schools have reinforced the local culture from the most absolute respect for the environment, as well as the importance of their existence and the sorrow and sad threat that the mayors of these towns also suffer in the face of the feared closure of the schools".
Tribute to Jesús Toledano
The most special tribute of the night was for Jesús Toledano, director of CEIP Los Geranios, who has been decorated by the Government of the Canary Islands with the Viera y Clavijo Award for his teaching career.
Everyone had words of consideration and admiration for his work and for him as a person. From the mayor of Arrecife, Eva de Anta, to his daughter Claudia, -with a tender congratulation in which she recognized the human quality and the values that her father has transmitted to her-, to the chronicler Rafael Curbelo, who related a sketch of Toledano. All highlighted "his capacity for integration, his exemplary attitude, his talent and his good work".
The mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort, -accompanied at the presidential table by the Minister of Education, Carmen Rosa Márquez, and by Rafael Bailón-, closed the event congratulating "all those who form and make up the unitary schools", and confessed that it is "an honor as mayor of a municipality that houses most of the rural schools on the island, to be the host in this well-deserved recognition in which all the agents involved in their survival come together". "To all of them, to all their human team, to the parents who demand, that they continue doing so to strengthen this educational model and grant long life to the rural settlements", he concluded.
