There is an amazing scene from the movie “Batman Begins” that you can see in YouTube:

It is titled “The Will to Act“, and although I am not an expert in superhero movies, you can bet this is an amazing training scene, a scene of literally “hands-on” learning. Please, don´t even dare to mention “swords-on” learning, don´t let students know that concept, especially second-graders. They will take it literally and bring their swords to the classroom. I had a bunch of second-graders who never stopped asking me to bring wooden swords to the classroom; that is why I say “second-graders.”

As you will soon realize as you read this second part of “Yes, We Can Grow Best!” that contains the keys to a growthful philosophy of education… how a growthful education for my students was meant to happen. Of course, I never was granted the freedom to fullly act according to my own will. I was always exposed to toxic environments and social control tactics that greatly limited the performance of my will to the extent of only being able to act according to what others allowed or not to happen, nor according to what I willed to happen… and now, finally, I can expose what was meant to happen in my growthful classrooom, what mattered to me and the education I meant to give to my students while I was a teacher.

Despite having the will to act, as a teacher I was never allowed to have the freedom to act according to my own “growthful will” to act. However… I do have had and currently still have the grace to act in a way that I can make it possible for my students to know what mattered to me most as a teacher and what should have happened in my classroom, but I wasn´t allowed to… so this is it, students, this is it what you should know when the appropriate moment comes. This whole part II of the text “Yes, We Can Grow Best!” shares the grace I have received to learn to be, to do, to grow, to glow, and to bloom in a growthful way. This whole second part of the text, as currently shared, is wisdom-based, the fruit of pure grace to act and of the experiences I had as a teacher, including the experience of being changed by what I learned from my students; I haven´t yet reviewed the proper philosophy of education references, as I will do for the final version of this text —expected to be shared on Thanksgiving Day—, to corroborate that what I have written is actually what is meant to be: the full philosophical exposition of a whole philosophy of education.

So… sometimes… the grace to act matters as much as the will to act. Sometimes you are not allowed to have a will of your own to act, everyone can be assured I could have never willed what my students went through… but still, then you find out you do have the grace to act according to what is meant by God to be in unity of being and act, if you let the Holy Spirit act and focus in what matters, not in what happens.

This whole second part of “Yes, We Can Grow Best!” shared that grace to act that I received as a teacher, shared as a final living lesson to my students so they could have growthful healing, too. Nope, the evil of what happened to you as my students was not willed by God nor by me. What you can read in this text was what was willed by God´s grace and by me. This is meant to be our grace to act.

Guess from where such a beautiful grace can only come from? From Jesus Charity´s Heart. This is literally hearts-on learning, in every growthful sense possible to be applied. All this is not only the fruit of the grace I received through my students´ gaze, simply for serving them and them being who they are to God-Love-with-us, but also the grace I received through Jesus Charity´s gaze upon them and me.

There is a beautiful song video made by Celine Dion in Las Vegas, of her song “If I could“. Is a song that any loving parent would sing to their children… and it would be an amazing song to transform into a “loving teacher” song. You can hear the song here:

If I could… this growthful education I am explaining now would have been the education I had given you, beloved students: the truth-based, person-affirming and fraternizing education you desserved and needed. I tried. I did my best. Now I share, with this second part of this text, what was meant to happen in the growthful classroom I tried to create for you.

If I could… I would have erased completely the hateful social context of your human right to receive an education centered on you as a person… being violated over and over again… But I couldn´t. As a matter of fact, as I am writing these lines, I can´t escape neither the forced social context of my human rights being systematically violated, over and over again, even by the very own authorities that are supposed to serve the citizens honoring those rights unconditionally… In the same way, I can´t escape the social context of human rights violations, and neither could you… and is not my fault nor your fault; it is a systematic social dysfunction. The human rights violations that are allowed systematically in a single part of society will necessarily repeat themselves in other parts of the same society also, because the dysfunction is systematic and social; it’s not due to a personal “fault” but due to a dysfuntion in the way a whole society works. Usually these kind of dysfuntions are accepted as “normal” by the society where they happen.

Well, as you can see, I haven´t accepted them as normal, and I have had plenty of times to choose to assume them as “normal.” I pray you also learn never to accept any violation of human rights, either committed against you or around you, as “normal.” Wherever they happen, whenever they happpen, whoever does them, violations of human rights destroy peace, destroy lives, and destroy society from within.

So… here we are. Attempting to make God-Love-with-us an offering of peace for future generations, as we are called to do it, in the middle of the most absolute and complete lack of the rule of law.

You, beloved students —making possible your most growthful personal formation— are the victory of the saints, the victory of a new albor of this Morning Star that makes all things anew with a new language, never spoken before: the language of an integractive human personal formation consummated as a living work of Love, each one of you a unique living work of Love, that adores Him with the whole growth in this altar of new albor, in this “altar de la Patria”, as our growthfulness —achieved by the grace to act, because nor me nor you willed these human rights violations to happen— makes possible a new albor for everyone else. In order to make possible that new growthfulness to be radiated in a new way… some doors must be closed, and that is totally necessary.

I cried a little bit while writing this “closing-the-door-of-my-teacher-stage-of-life” post, but it is good and healthy to allow you to cry at the appropriate times. Nope, what happened to us —what authorities allowed to happen systematically, one school after another— shouldn’t have been allowed to happen to any child or student, but we can all become growthful after what we have learned together… from the experiences —also known as “unwilling learning”— we have shared together as teacher-students since the very first time I began to be a teacher, way before being a certified teacher, although I don’t talk explicitly about that part of my teaching experience in this text, here I only tell explicitly the certified-teacher experiences. Lessons can be learned from all this, for the other ones to come after us. I couldn´t eradicate the social context of human rights violations committed against you, and around you; that is true. But I could choose to be the example that another way to conceive a civilization is possible, that another way to teach is possible, that another way to conceive the education of our children is possible, allowing them, and you, to become the best you can be according to who you are and who we are called to be. That is the “growthful dream” I explain at the end of this text as the harvest of a new civilization of Love, of a growthful society.

You won´t need to hide like I am literally doing right now in order to be able to function socially due to the extreme violations of human rights around me. You will be able to have a free life and a free mind if the lessons of what was allowed to happen with us and around us are learned.

Beloved students: keep the grace, and forget the rest. Keep the best, and forget the rest. Dont let your wings be cut by the trauma, because you are meant to reach very high heights as the star-seeds you had always been, as the growthful stars you had always been.

Truly, there is nothing to forgive of anything of what you had been forced to do. You were forced. Nothing was your fault, nor mine. We can simply choose to focus in what was supposed to matter, not in what happened.

This text, “Yes We Can Grow Best!“, focuses in what matters, for you and for many students more to come. The whole writing process of this text had been a truly graceful and growthful healing process to close an extremely traumatic stage of my life. There is only one thing worst than being tortured: seeing innocent people being tortured due to who you are (what was being done to you and to me was to not allowing me to be, neither as teacher nor as the best person I could be)

Dare to be growthful, beloved students! That is the best social healing possible in these circumstances.

I am truly thankful for the time I was able to share with you and help you to grow. I repeat now how I paraphrased Randy Paush at the conclusion: my dreams for my students are very growthful: I want them to find their own path to fulfillment and achieve their own dreams. And given that I won´t be there, I want to make this clear: students, don´t try to figure out what I want you to become. I want you to become what you want to become, as long as you become the best person you can be in the process of becoming who you want to become, according to who you are and who you are called to be as an equal and dignified part of a growthful “we, the people”.

As I explain at the conclusion of the text, using the same tone that Helen´s teacher uses to say, “SHE KNOWS!”: “THEY GROW!” YOU GROW! And yes, you were the ones who let what mattered be in my classroom; you were the ones who gave me “the key for a growthful philosophy of education.” Well, technically, there are 17 keys right now, not only one key, but you get it. You can see the scene I am referring to now and that I also use at the conclusion (A Growthful Harvest: Launching a Growthful Society) here. It is a scene from the movie “The Miracle Worker“:

Wherever you are and wherever you go, whatever you become, dare to learn how to be growthful and do your best, because that is the best last living lesson I could ever give to you as the growthful teacher I meant and tried to be for you all. You will ever be the act of my growthful dream come true and the beginning of the launching of a growthful society: yes, we can grow best!

A few final comments must be included in this post in order to make possible the best understanding possible of this text.

The first one: as you may realize as you read the text, the perspective is not legalistic at all. Yes, about a thousand laws were violated through everything I have shared, but that had never been the main issue by itself to me. I do assume a very concrete legal issue in the “Growthful Healing” section, when I talk about the privacy issue: to what extent should a teacher keep her privacy duty if a student´s integrity is at risk and there is clear institutional abuse evidence in the private information that the student provides? If the scenario is about domestic abuse, all teachers are clearly told that in that case, the teacher must provide all the evidence, even if it is private information provided by the student. However, no one tells you explicitly the same if we are talking about institutional abuse. Should I photograph my students’ notebooks to demonstrate the institutional abuse pattern, even if their notebooks are meant to be private? Should I photograph their IEPs simply to show how the documents are being manipulated for institutional harassment purposes, even if that means breaching the student´s privacy? Legally speaking, that was the hugest issue to me. It took me a thousand years to realize that if I had the evidence to prove institutional abuse in courts, it was my duty to provide it to the competent authorities by whatever means I could in my very difficult circumstances: whatever I did in my devices (posting private posts, taking a photo, take a note in the note app of the iPhone…) was being seen and used at all moments both to commit abuse and also by the authorities to assess what was going on, and it was the second which mattered most at the end, because the firsts were the ones committing the crimes… and trust me when I say, there is a moment you get tired of playing mind games with the abusers who you know that are accessing what you do in your device… I have gotten used, due to the nature of the abuse, to having a totally public life, because wherever I am, whatever I do, no matter in which device I do it… everything had been seen for years by both authorities and criminals. I had been systematically denied the very possibility of a private life since my whole life… but my students should be denied that possibility also? The issue was very real… and in the end, preserving the integrity of the students had more weight than breaching the privacy… because it was already being breached by the criminals, no matter what I did or did not do. I realized that very, very, very evidently when a eighth grader in my home classroom had a clear anxiety attack when I put the movie “Justice League” for the first time in the classroom (I hadn´t seen the movie myself, but I knew the content was appropriate for them) and the movie begins with a song that says “EVERYBODY KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWS, EVERYBODY KNOOOOOOOOWS…” She had a full-blown panic attack as she heard the song, and I gave her space instead of letting know to the very administration that was committing the abuse (they knew, of course, I described clearly what happened on my own device, and they hacked all my devices for their psychosocial control purposes). That factor was very determinant when I chose to “breach” the privacy of students on my own (that means: I knew whatever thing I put in my devices, no matter how “private” I could put it, would be seen by everybody who was hacking my devices): their privacy was being breached first by the abusers, and the students themselves knew they couldn´t do anything about that. I myself wouldn´t be helping them if I didn´t expose everything that was going on. The only way to keep the students empowered was by showing them explicitly, with the example, because no one would be able to recognize openly what was going on and why the abuse that the school administration did was wrong. However, my main issue is not legalistic at all; I simply limit myself to state facts, including evidently illegal facts… but for me… they were not only victims: they were people first, they were a personal identity first. I always had the “human dimension” of the whole abusive scheme very clear. If I did what I did was because I knew the students themselves deserved to know the truth, not merely as “evidence” to be shown in courts, but for themselves, so they could be able to understand at the appropriate moment why what was going on and what was being endured was so damaging to who they were meant to be as persons. This has especially deep connotations in the first school I describe in my text, which was the most institutionally abusive of all. I now know, I will face them in court someday, as I have clearly stated in my social media, that I know they read.

The second comment that must be made about this text is that… the lack of recognition of education as a human right is way more common than anyone could be able to realize. I myself had been a missionary in places in which students were totally unable to learn beyond very basic primary school (among Guarani indigenous in Paraguay), and we as missionaries could do anything about it because it was meant to be something done by the state, not by us (we did volunteer in the school, but our missionary focus was religious, not educative). Students among us may not realize what I have realized since being a missionary student in high school: not everybody has the privilege of being educated. Students have this tendency to think that school is mandatory torture, and they are suddenly shocked when you show them evidence that education… is still a privilege, not a human right at all. I read an article today or yesterday that said that 280 million children around the world are unable to go to school at all. I am not the best person at math at all, but doing very bad math here, and considering there are 2 billion children around the world right now… we are talking about TWENTY FIVE PERCENT OF CHILDREN OF THE WORLD BEING UNABLE TO RECEIVE AN EDUCATION AT 2024. Whoever thinks education is currently a human right is hugely mistaken: as it is right now, education functions more as a privilege for some, not as a human right for all. A lot, way a lot, must be done to reach populations in which schools are not yet built. I would dare to suggest creating a worldwide organization like Teachers Without Borders (like the organization Doctors Without Borders) to provide a regulated structure so there can be young teachers who volunteer to go teach somewhere where is needed and there are the language capabilities to teach (yes, you need to know the native language for being able to teach somewhere). Especial reinforcements should be given to the education provided to refugees or at war zones because that is the only window those children will have to a sense of “normalcy” in their infancy and childhood among such extremely exceptional socioeconomic circumstances. Schools should be unconditional sacred ground to everyone, especially in war zones… or in zones where there is no rule of law, as it has happened the facto where I had been teaching. Whoever dares to touch children and use them as war weapons, whoever dares to train children as terrorists, whoever tortures children at school, whoever kidnaps children from schools… should be prosecuted for a crime of war in international courts of justice. As a matter of fact, I have asked myself several times if the children´s holocaust I have described, very concretely in the first school, should be prosecuted directly at an International Court of Justice and not at a federal court.

A final comment about the revision process that will be followed next, after what is being shared now, with this Part II.

There are certain revisions of the text that I can´t be expected to be able to do now. One of the comments I have been made about the “progress” achieved in this text is that the glowers section is too short because I have no experience in how school mentorship works, what students think about the importance of school mentoring, and what difference it does to them to have a good mentor as systemic part of their educational background. Well, the observation is quite real, but the fact is: there is no school in Puerto Rico with mentors; I would have been commented that as a student teacher of the most important Faculty of Education on the island who already was doing comments about mentors being needed in schools. I had never seen a school with mentors, no one has them. So you may expect that in the long distant future, a wider revision of this text can be done when a growthful educational environment can begin to actually be reached, and I can know more about what a glower is meant to be from the student´s perspective. I could consider myself to have had “mentors” in my own school years because I had a very close relationship with some teachers and school personnel, but I had never seen a school-wide mentorship system work in a school setting, so I need more experience to handle the glowers section properly.

Despite that kind of evident limitations, totally normal to be expected in circumstances like these —there are things in this philosophical exposition that do not exist yet… worldwide. This is not merely a “national” limitation, this is not a matter of concepts like “psychopedagogist” or “psychohumanist”, among others, not existing yet in the United States: most of what I am exposing doesn´t exist yet in a worldwide sense—, the final version of “Yes, We Can Grow Best: Keys for a Growthful Philosophy of Education“, with all its revisions (including an “academic” and a final “editorial” revision, that will be done after the wisdom-based revision has been completed) is expected to be completed and shared on a next post in Thanksgiving. I won´t ruin surprises, but you can expect the following scene to be discussed in the Thanksgiving post:

Another scene that will be discussed in the Thanksgiving post, especially towards the topic of “closing doors” of my philosophical and certified teaching eras, will be this one:

Yes, this philosophical exposition is simultaneously the “closing scene” of my philosophical phase and my teaching phase of the growthful story of my life.

For now, the whole wisdom-based text version of “Yes, We Can Grow Best: Keys for a Growthful Philosophy of Education” is attached at the end of this blog post.

Let´s keep growing together in communion! 🌻