My journey through the Asunción of Querétaro
Before we begin, it is worth pausing on the history: this year, 2026, the Instituto Asunción de Querétaro celebrates its 60th jubilee year.
It all began with a group of families from Querétaro who, knowing the work of the Religious of the Assumption in Mexico City, wished their daughters to receive that same formation. After talking with the sisters and sharing the same purpose, they adapted a house for a small group of pupils in the early grades. Its growth was such that they soon expanded onto the plot across the street. They moved Personalized and Community Education to its permanent home: a five-hectare green lung with wide green areas and open spaces, right beside the emblematic Arcos de Querétaro.
Although it was originally founded as a school for girls, over the years the IAQ became a co-educational school, responding flexibly to the needs of its time. Across these six decades, the school has survived economic crises, generational transitions and, more recently, the enormous challenge of the pandemic and digital learning, showing that its structure does not depend on physical walls, but on human bonds, spiritual growth and the resilience that characterises our community.
Why is this background necessary? Because I am part of that history.
I arrived on 10 January 2020, covering two sections (secondary and high school) in a school year that was already a semester under way. I stepped into a pedagogy unlike my previous experiences; I had to dust off the books on integrative educational models and reinvent myself on the go.
During that process of adaptation, the news began to report a virus on the other side of the world. I believed — like so many — that staying home would be temporary, a brief pause before returning full of energy for the end of the year. The surprise was a year-and-a-half lockdown that dictated entirely new rules and forced us to move life onto a digital plane. Newly arrived, I faced the stumbling blocks of a format that blurred the boundary of work — a strangeness I am sure you understand.
Yet, amid that interaction mediated by pixels and the lack of tangible bonds, the real challenge was not technical but human: learning to sustain the purpose of accompanying, in spite of distance. So, when we finally returned in person, we came face to face with the legacies of the pandemic, moving from the screen to a new way of living together and of taking in the content, under teaching formats that still felt new.
As the months passed, change kept making itself felt. Just as the Assumption has watched several generations of students pass along its path, each leaving a memory that marks you, for me this experience has been built not only with those who fill the desks, but with those I work alongside day by day. Life reminds us that people's paths do not always end in the same place or at the same time; we meet in one space and then the road forks — but today I am learning to give thanks for those encounters.
I will be honest with you: I never imagined that the value of friendship would be so present in the relationships I have built here, born of the simple act of loving in freedom. I have learned to extend my ways of caring, both at a distance and with those with whom I still share the day, cherishing the group that brings the DESES-TRESS, or walking side by side with the very best GUERRERA.
Between institutional reforms and natural changes, my place now belongs solely to the teenagers of Secondary school. The changes are not only internal, but also physical. Beyond the ordinary transformations within a workplace, I have moved my office several times, carrying with me the essence of creating a "relax lounge" kind of space: a corner where people can sit down, enjoy some comfort and find support.
Alongside the physical moves come those inner transformations that time demands of us. Today my work in the face of the generational gap — both with the teenagers of this era and with the millennials joining as colleagues — goes beyond mere adaptation. The real psycho-formative challenge is to build bridges of mutual understanding: to decipher their codes and ways of seeing life, not to blend in with them, but to guide with greater clarity, shape psychopedagogical practice and coordinate efforts toward a common goal. It is about ensuring that our differences become the richness with which we support and accompany the community. What a challenge!
In the midst of all this, the Assumption has been not only the setting of my professional growth, but the mirror of my own development; it has allowed me to be part of a life that moves toward new challenges and takes on responsibilities full of hope. And there is much to say about spiritual growth, which is yet another of the great adventures.
This journey through the Assumption has not been easy, but embracing the moment is what makes it sustainable. Offering my service here — as in everyday life — means shaping myself according to my surroundings, learning from uncertainty and reinventing myself as I go. Today I know that my work does not stop at changes of format; I have the versatility to move fluidly between the digital and the in-person, because I have learned that the real challenge is never technical, but human. In tune with Mother Marie-Eugénie, I try to keep "my gaze open to the needs of our time," sustaining the purpose of accompaniment despite any distance.
To be here is to give thanks for the encounters and to learn to love people in freedom. In being Assumption, I become a channel that creates bonds, offering a space where, together, we take on the challenges of the present and turn our environment into a place worth inhabiting.
Recognising that I am part of the sixty years of history of the Assumption in Querétaro fills me with pride and perspective, knowing that this is not yet fully written, because the road goes on.
Marlé Uribe Ortiz
Psychopedagogue at the Instituto Asunción de Querétaro