To teach is to touch a life forever

Describing a person for whom I have nothing but admiration is not an easy task. It may result in a boring piece of writing or even in a listing of factual information. Moreover, there are so many people whom I deeply respect that it can be quite an issue. However, when it comes to talk about a teacher who gathers those characteristics, everything turns out to be very simple. The first name that comes to my mind is that of my dearest professor María Teresa Viñas Urquiza. Even though I started coursing my studies in 2000 in the institution I used to go to, I met her back in 2003 and 2005 when I attended Grammar II and Linguistics respectively in the Teaching Training College. María Teresa was one of the two teachers in charge of those subjects and that was the reason why I decided to enroll myself in those professorships. I had excellent references of her classes and of herself but I had never thought they would be that much. Exaggerated as it may sound, it is nothing but the truth. Since this day, I have never regretted having taken such decision. Although her lessons were perfectly challenging and many of the times extremely tiring, they used to be rewarding at a superlative degree. I will never forget the way I felt whenever I went back home after meeting her. My head would spin like a washing machine. Yet, the feeling of a mission successfully accomplished meant much more to me. I remember how much I enjoyed everything and anything: every lesson, the homework she would give us, all the corrections that came about.

It is my firm belief that María Teresa, or simply Viñas Urquiza, as many called her around the hallways of Lengüitas, is the synthesis of the teaching perfection and excellence. She has become my ideal teaching model to follow for she is constantly concerned about her students. Always willing to help us improve, María Teresa believes in our capacities and abilities. So much so that she would back up any risky decision somebody might take if that implies that, in the end, one might have achieved some kind of academic or personal goal.
Nonetheless, not everything what glitters is gold. Honestly and truly, I must admit that this fabulous person and experienced teacher has the most dreadful and incomprehensible pronunciation ever. It is sort a mixture between RP, Cockney and her inborn accent, caught up in Córdoba - the province where she was born. At times, it was very difficult to understand her. The whole group including me used to ask her to repeat what she was saying in the most polite manner we could think of.

No matter how strange she speaks, how awful her pronunciation was, María Teresa is sensitive, caring and friendly. She lightens up a classroom by simply entering it. I have never seen a person who enjoys teaching as much as she does. Any person can immediately notice that happiness and pleasure just by looking at her sweet and huge smile, by paying attention to her attitudes and behaviour. Every lesson is more like a workshop, since you learn not only grammar but also how to profit from what you are doing. It is by no means absolutely worthwhile.

I will be eternally thankful to her for all I learnt: to seize every opportunity in life, to take advantage of my career, to enjoy my studies. I feel proud of having been her student and I also feel that same way when I mention her to my new professor at UADE and many happen to know her. María Teresa is like a celebrity within the Teaching Training environment. She was once deputized to talk to her former students who were receiving their degree. In a sweet and short passage she said “you have chosen a very rewarding profession. When you teach all your personal problems and sorrows are forgotten; when you teach you set in motion what is best in you: values, ideals, passion, love… Teaching turns work into pleasure. Enjoy it”.  She could not be more accurate. She managed to describe in a very short passage what teaching means to her and what it means to me.