Last June 6th, our country celebrated the day of the Bolivian teacher and I decided to investigate for the first time why this celebration is held. It turns out that the chosen date corresponds to the birth of Modesto Omiste Tinajeros, a native of Potosí who is considered the father of education in our country due to his pedagogical and political contributions to generate changes in education.
Modesto back in 1860 after finishing his studies taught at the Pichincha school with new pedagogical methods for the time; he was always concerned about education and tried to motivate two things: free public education and the continuous training of teachers. He was the manager of the Teachers’ Assemblies and in them he gave training to teachers of the municipal schools of Potosí making them considered the best in the country. Thanks to her political efforts, she also influenced the Law of Freedom of Education of 1872.
Reading this, I wanted to remember my grandmother Olga Yapur, who was a teacher and retired as the director of one of the most important and respected public schools in Tarija. She took us as children to one of the schools where she taught elementary school. At that time, the Juan XXIII school was one of the furthest from the city. We took the bus and had to walk a long way through trees and a ravine. It was a poor school, small, but with many children, and that was perhaps my first experience with education. My grandmother motivated my brothers and me to teach what we had already learned to her own students, and so we, still children, became educators for a few minutes.
Perhaps it was my grandmother’s anecdotes, about how she traveled on a donkey to communities in the Chaco and wrote with lime stones on blackboards painted with charcoal, simulating the chalk or markers that we now use to teach; Perhaps it was her experiences of fighting to change the way of teaching in the city’s schools or her stumbles at the seat of government when she wanted to grow in her profession or perhaps it was only the memories of her studying to advance from teacher to director that motivated me to happily walk the path of education.
And although now neither of these two great teachers is alive, I hope that the ESFM students we train in Alma find on their way a Modesto Omiste or an Olga Yapur who inspires them, motivates them and allows them to walk the path of education with great passion and vocation.
By:
Andrea Fernández Blacutt
Modesto Omiste Tinajeros
Olga Yapur Gutierrez