This sad loss of Verónica Forqué has led me to a great reflection. I believe that nowadays, in schools, we should have empathy and how to channel emotions as an indispensable subject. We see how young children have suicidal tendencies, they tell us about sadness and not wanting to live. I have experienced it with secondary school students, in those support classes, when they open up to you and tell you how they feel. Now in primary school there is talk of these emotions and frustrations, how unimportant that 4; 5 or 6 grade is, so that their parents and we teachers end up completing a paper or a compliment, but how much is behind that is not valued. It should not be a luxury to pay to invest in emotional intelligence, it should be within everyone's reach and we could deal with grief.
It upsets me more and more that children of 5 or 6 years old are referred to mental health; something is wrong and that failure becomes destructive thoughts, that "cheer up, you have everything" is not enough, as it was not enough for Verónica Forqué; to get her out of her torture and that terrible hell where she was immersed, it is a accumulation of years, one after another and I know what I'm talking about.
You cannot quantify or qualify what it feels like when we have depression.
We use any tool to climb and we are ashamed to say that we are going to a psychologist, and putting patches is not worth it; falling is easy and going down to hell too, but climbing is hard.
I am dismayed by her loss and by those children who have cut short their lives for not telling their sorrows. From below, I will always say, you have to see the soul of the child and then he will be able to acquire knowledge, but many times it is better to go to school and leave the problem for another time.
According to Goleman, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize our own feelings and those of others, to motivate ourselves and to manage relationships adequately. We can all enhance and improve that skill” I fully support his theory.
Maybe I'm a rare teacher; strange or that I complicate myself as many say, but I get involved of my own free will, I think that if I can get a minimum; that maximum is achieved among all. Ravines sometimes need canes to climb them and that we all have one on hand, so that the road is not so tortuous. You cling to anything that keeps you upright, as many of us have done.
Less negative words, fewer Pisa reports and more sitting down to listen. We all put on the medals of putting a 10; we have to save the vulnerable and the needy by giving them canes, so that they are not one more Verónica Forqué. Emotional short circuits are dark and life has to be lived with dignity.
As you said Verónica; “you have to be authentic” and I want to be. That not all of us are the same, does not mean that we are imperfect. Not everything has to be four-leaf clovers.
Juani Alemán Hernández.