A Tribute to my 2A and 2B (2005) High School Students at Saint John English School, Rancagua, Chile

…”Things you try to hold on to are first to go…and all the things you want to go away…. stay” That’s what I remember from the 15- minute short film called “Try” that came to me, thanks to a wonderful Smashing Pumpkins fans and high achiever that I’m pleased to teach…
After a few days, I got the chance of sharing it with my students… and after that class… I surely learned from them far more that they have ever learned from me…. only a pen, some paper and a last minute movie theater set up in the cafeteria was enough to reach the most precious part of them…That class really made the difference! There was no grammar, no dialogues, paraphrasing, nothing, just images, a simple story and lots of feelings, ideas rushing to our minds….hard to put them in words?… not really… not for these soft- hearted young students full of ideals and dreams still to come…. I’m so very proud of you all!!!

“… her name was Linda, she was pregnant, her boyfriend was with her…sometimes you just need to know that someone cares about you to carry on, to keep on living…when you want something you fight for it…hopes aren’t worth anything if they are just thoughts…fight for your dreams...don’t sink in your problems or run away from them, face them, even if hard to do it…life is great...worth fighting for…” (Daniela Cid)

“… after we saw this short film, we had a strange feeling; we were sad…impressed” (Francisco Durán and Antonio Hernández)

“in this world love is not enough to survive… she just dreamt and never did anything to get it… there are lots of Lindas around the world… they fall in love no matter if he is ugly or cute…low self-esteem…they can even leave their parents…isn’t that their parents never gave them a good quality life…” (Mariela Garrido)

“…I don’t really know what my feelings are like…it seems they were lost in this world...they really didn’t know they were hurting themselves…this is a good lesson…to care for our families, ourselves…to enjoy life…to just say “NO” to drugs…to live” (Daniela Morales)

“… it shows the worst side of human beings…in Chile we have this drug addiction problem…we are having elections soon… people running for presidency should propose to put an end to this problem…I was very interested in watching it all, thank you for letting us see a great documentary film..” (Pablo Clavero)

“… each one chooses what kind of life to live...you are surprised to see people so young whose life is based on drugs and alcohol…”( Mariela Delso)

“… we must be alert and stay away from drugs… where were the parents of those children? I said children because they aren’t adults after all …education must start at home … “ (Patricio Céspedes)

“…we thought film was trying to teach us a lesson…after a while we started to feel our lives perfect compared to theirs …we started feeling everything that happened to her was happening to us… we felt sad, desperate.. with no way out; as if we wanted to help her, but she didn’t let us … we couldn’t believe her life was so miserable …” (Josefina Rivera and Tania Vidal)

“…Damage was getting bigger and bigger… I don’t know what I would do if I were in their shoes…feelings and emotions got straight to my heart …” (Karla Valverde)

“..in the first minutes of the video we thought it would have a happy ending but something made us feel happy the couple true love.. no matter what happened they were together…but such is life..it can be hard, difficult, horrible but here we are…living…” (Consuelo Zúñiga and Melani Zepeda)

."... you don´t have to destroy your mind trying to understand why sauch a bad thing like this could ever happen to us! and the best answer I can think of is ...Why not? What makes us so special ...What makes us diffrent from all the others.. and the answer is nothing!...people who live on the streets, do drugs... get money from prostitution...usually die with no one but themselves...and what schoks me the most is that ...no one cares..." (Maximiano Valdés)
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