Like all enthusiastic physics students, Moisés initiated a long-distance relationship with CERN. In its early years, it was a relationship through books, scientific magazines and classes at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Galicia). Over the years, as with good wine, this relationship improved. Distances were reduced.
Moisés was born in A Coruña, the one painted by the surrealist, Urbano Lugris. It is not very easy to appreciate it, but among the streets of this artist’s great mural is located the high school where Moses has been teaching physics and mathematics since 2008.
Moisés would have loved to do a PhD in Physics, but he soon had to start working. Due to his great interest in programming, he worked as a database programmer for a long time. One day, he felt that his professional career had arrived at a deadlock, so he decided to turn to education, to spread his passion for science.
It was in 2017, when his relationship with CERN shortened tons of kilometres. Moisés got a grant from the Spanish Physics Royal Society to participate in the CERN Spanish Teachers Programme. He liked the experience so much that, two years later, he applied for the International Teachers Programme.
This time, with a CERN grant, he came back for two weeks in which, due to the shutdown of the machine, Moisés and the other teachers had the opportunity to visit the hearts of CMS and Alice. It was, physically speaking, the most direct connection to his beloved CERN.
Thanks to those programmes, in which the teacher’s suit is changed by the student’s one, Moisés could updated his knowledge about recent discoveries in modern physics, and transfer them to his high school students. He started to introduce modern physics topics, that are only studied in the pre-university course, inside the normal curriculum of the physics subject. He also conducted modern physics experiments with them during their hands-on-lab practices.
He thinks this is important because some of these high school students may be the physicists of the future. Teachers like Moisés play the important role of encouraging them and motivating them through this kind of experiences. Sometimes the youngest feel that experiments of two centuries ago have little to do with themselves and with their day-to-day life. Moisés proved them wrong.
He always recommends them to study what they are passionate about. It is not worth worrying about the economic prospects because, between their enrolment and their graduation, the landscape can change. As the most important figure of the Galician culture of the 20th century, Castelao said: “I studied medicine out of respect for my father, but I did not practice it out of respect for humanity”. Teenagers do not have to study what their parents tell them or something that assures them a job. If they are sure about what they want, they should follow their hearts, as Moisés once did.
He also gives them advice on how to learn anything, through the Feynman technique, and on how to manage their time, especially when studying. Also for his students, Moisés opened a YouTube channel in 2010.There, he was able to upload all the videos that he wanted to show them, and also hosted those that, after years, he decided to make: small capsules focused on problem solving.
Moisés, who is also one of the teachers at the USC Physics Summer Campus, has three clear, feasible and hierarchical wishes to improve the educational situation in Spain which, in fact, can be applied to any country. Firstly, teacher training, before and throughout their professional development. Later, to decrease the student-teacher ratio, the optimum being around 12-15 students per classroom. And more later, resources.
Castelao also said that “true heroism is about turning dreams into reality and ideas into deeds”. Many heroes are still needed. Luckily, we have dreamers with good aim like Moisés.