The return to face-to-face in the teaching-learning process, after so many months of distance education and the inclement scourge of COVID-19, will pose an enormous challenge for the Cuban school, probably the largest, most complex and challenging in a long time.

It is true that this is no longer an unprecedented situation, the 2019-2020 academic year was also impacted by the pandemic, but it was quite advanced when SARS-CoV-2 arrived in our lives, while the one who is about to meet again with the School has had to develop from the first weeks of school in front of a television, in a majority portion of the national geography.

Recently, in dialogue with the press, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, Minister of Education, highlighted the intense work in the territories and each educational institution to create the conditions that guarantee that phased and safe return to the presence to complete a school year, whose vitality was preserved in the Greater Antilla through thick and thin.

In this regard, it meant that, beyond the repair and maintenance program, a meticulous review has been made to change what is broken, install what is missing, enable spaces that ensure physical distancing and get everything ready for when the time comes because even with everyone in the school vaccinated, compliance with hygienic-sanitary measures will have to be just as strict.

The teaching staff, meanwhile, intensify the methodological preparation, aware of the magnitude of the challenge that this return implies, after such a prolonged and forced separation from the school, to which children, adolescents and young people will not return being the same or equal conditions in the academic field.

Some assimilated more and others less the content taught in television teaching activities, there are some who became ill or lost a loved one; in one way or another, these endless months have taken a toll on everyone and there are sequels in the psychological order that affect learning and educators will have to take care of, he explained.

The head of the Ministry of Education considered the individual, personalized diagnosis that each school has made of its students, a formidable instrument, which will facilitate this differentiated work, always valuable and in these times essential for, the same in the field of teaching, that in the emotional, affective and motivational sphere, help those who need it.

He considered essential for this endeavor the work of the psychopedagogues that the educational institutions have, of the specialists of the diagnosis and orientation centers at the municipal level, and of the researchers, such as those of the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences, who have already carried out studies, evaluations and important proposals.

Addressing differences will be crucial, for example, in a degree as important as the first grade in primary education, in which basic knowledge, competencies and skills are acquired for future learning and for life as a whole, such as literacy.

Due to the work and grace of the pandemic, families have had to take charge of this task and although certainly many children already know how to read and write, others do not, and back in the classroom they will have to work hard and in conditions that are not ideal; the obligatory use of the sanitary mask makes teaching-learning difficult.

When the course is resumed in person, in each school the first-year students will be gathered according to the phonemic groups they dominate, explained Zulima Lobaina Olazabal, national director of Primary Education at MINED, to the press, and mentioned the motivation, willingness to learn and concentration as key elements, which the teachers will seek to encourage in their disciples.

In that, as in each of the grades and educational levels, the challenge is enormous and much will have to be done and will surely be done. Cuban educators have plenty of talent, will, enthusiasm, creativity, tenacity, audacity and commitment, as well as the preparation and tools necessary to succeed in this and any other endeavor.

As if that were not enough, each educational institution has been designing, which tailor-made suit, a school organization adjusted to its reality and conditions and that responds to the needs of the students, with precise actions and enough time to deepen, exercise, consolidate, systematize and even introduce new content, so that the objectives are beaten and the 2020-2021 academic year has a happy ending.