The publication is part of the Monographs and Study Texts Series of the Research and Development Directorate of the University of La Serena.

The publication revives the experiences of the normalista teachers through several testimonies of those who were in charge of training and educating hundreds of young people in the Coquimbo Region. The book called "The pedagogical spirit in the biographical narrative of normal school teachers" was presented in an emotional ceremony held at the former La Serena Normal School and attended by authorities, academics, students, former normal school students and their families.

The academic from the ULS Department of Education, Dr. Silvia López de Maturana, was in charge of giving life to the significant work, and on the occasion she referred to the origin of the publication. “It is a book whose sole purpose is to pay tribute to the normal school teachers who dedicated most of their lives to educating, preserving the desire to learn and giving meaning to the act of teaching. My interest focused on listening with genuine interest to the stories of the teachers who studied at the Normal School, to transcend the sole professional career, that is, I was interested in knowing what surprised them, why they were sad, what made them happy, how they lived the day by day, what happened inside the School; everything that is not in books, but in the collective and oral memory that is transmitted from generation to generation. In that way, I was learning and enriching myself pedagogically,” she expressed.

The activity included the words of the normal teacher Susana Pacheco, who was in charge of writing the prologue of the book. "Our generation came out with the new conception of education, where the human mind is recognized as a living force and the child as a being that thinks, reasons, judges and has all the possible and necessary faculties (...), the education received At the Normal School of La Serena, he placed as his central axis the formation of the character of the future teacher and for this he accompanied her daily in the exercise of those practices that in daily life tend to awaken all the noble feelings", was part of the story of the teacher who experienced this valuable training for herself.

Likewise, on the occasion, the words of the historian of education and winner of the National Education Award (2015), Iván Núñez, who contextualized the subject of normal schools at the time when the teachers carried out their training, were projected. “Perhaps the profession of normalistas did not have the demands and complexities of today's university professions, but they were the profession closest to the needs of the majority of the popular world,” he asserted.

The ceremony was attended by the protagonists themselves who are part of the stories. One of them is Elba Carmona, who through poetic words expressed with great feeling the spirit of what it was like to be a normalista. The copy of the book was also given as a present to the representatives of the families of Isabel Barraza and Daphnne Castillo, and to teachers Cecilia Zúñiga, María Cristina Vallejos and Susana Pacheco, for being active collaborators of the publication.

It should be noted that this work also had the support of the fourth-year student of the Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education degree, Paola Araya, who transcribed part of the testimonies. “This task has been one of the most pleasant that I have had to perform, every afternoon in the teacher's office, I projected myself discovering how the educational process happened long ago and for me, as an educator in training, it was exciting to be able to see how the teachers still kept the pedagogical spirit over the years,” she said.

Finally, Professor María Paz Cerda delighted those present with the performance of a song from the time, culminating the launch with a tour of the Memory Room of the Former Normal School.

Source: Unit for the Integrated Management of Pedagogies (UGIP) | PMI FIP ULS1501 – CM ULS 1755