From vacations to the start of the school year.

The second half of August is a time of exchange between recreational or leisure plans and the creation of conditions for the upcoming stage: the beginning of the school year.

The second half of August is a time of exchange between recreational or leisure plans and the creation of conditions for the stage ahead: the beginning of the school year.

The beginning of the new school term, marked for September 2nd for general education, September 16th for the first year of university and mid-October for the rest of the students, involves several groups, entities and social sectors.

On one side are the students, many of whom will be going to the classroom for the first time, with the volume of expectations and concerns that this generates, and the majority, the continuing students, who will be reunited with their teachers and fellow students.

At the other extreme are the parents, busy searching for notebooks, the lining (paper or plastic) for books, pencils or «the mechanical pencil», preferred by the current generations, and other school supplies, at prices that do not reach the height of the clouds and touch the ground.

In addition to this, there is the purchase of the school uniform. This is a complex task for parents, since it includes worrying about the date of sale, finding the right size for the child or adolescent and, if not, finding the seamstress who, among her orders, will prioritize their arrangement.

Along with this panorama that these days is being drawn inside homes, the preparation for the new school year is progressing at the institutional level.

From the Ministry of Education to the educators, the aim is to guarantee the technical and methodological resources required for the development of the teaching-educational process according to Cuban pedagogy and, above all, to complete the teaching force, which is considered an important priority.

Challenges that Cuba assumes in the midst of the economic limitations that the country is experiencing, aggravated by the U.S. blockade and the direct sanctions, of high financial-mercantile impact, imposed by the administration of Donald Trump.

Written by Ana González.