Another aspect of the school that in my opinion has been an essential education space for adolescents is the Student Center. Like you were saying: participation, spaces for participation, and I say participation and recognizing adolescents as individuals with knowledge and things to offer to us, things we learn together with them. Because there are things one learns together with them. It’s with them and alongside them.
I was telling you about the work done by adolescents that participated in the Student Center. Moreover, today I tell this with pride—and I learned about this after I retired from my position as principal—: one of the girls that was president of the Student Center is now the director of Juventudes del Municipio de Moreno (Moreno’s Youth Office). This was during the unification process of a six-year school, and this girl had a twin sister, and trust me, these sisters were destined for dropout because they were feisty, they had all sorts of issues.
And we found no way around it, but then we started to propose that they join the Student Center: they found their place, they found their place; also, I always said this to Sergio because I’m perhaps more involved in social networks—also while we were the leading team, those were the years of the technology boom, and we saw very clearly how all of it was handled. But anyway, I’ll finish the story. I remember I followed [her] on Facebook and I said to Sergio, look at the way Ayelén Basualdo has improved her writing—first she was the delegate and then president of the Student Center, look at how, out of the need to prove a point, to express an idea, she has improved her writing, her written communication skills, it was impressive. Well, today I can say, now that I’m retired, that she’s the director of Juventud, and the work she’s doing—a girl who was destined to… and it is the adults that envision these destinies, to be on the margins, and today she’s not on the margins.