Puerto Rican teacher dreams of meeting Ellen Degeneres

Two years ago, Puerto Rican master Pascual Cubero Soto, based in Indiana, posted a tweet regretting that he saw further and further the possibility of meeting his favorite personality, the American comedian and presenter Ellen DeGeneres.

He never imagined that the daily dynamics of teaching would lead him, by chance, to achieve his desire and much more than that, as not only did he make contact with Ellen, but the production of the program gave them $ 10,000. for the school he works for and another $ 10,000 for him, among other items.

The educator, a native of San Sebastian, shared this morning with Primera Hora that one of his students began reading a book about animals, especially the subject of gorillas, a primate species that the Ellen Foundation protects on a campus in Rwanda.

“The student came to me to tell me data from the book, like‘ Professor did you know the male gorilla does this and the female gorilla does this, ’then I said,‘ Ellen has a foundation of gorillas she protects so they can grow ‘, and that’s where all the dynamics are given that the child doesn’t know Ellen, and another of my students tells her,’ how come you don’t know Ellen, if Ellen is like Jesus Christ, who everyone knows, is superb ‘, and this is the anecdote he posted on Twitter, about what happened in my living room, “said Cubero Soto of the event that provoked the immediate reaction of the famous.

“When I post this story it is that she responds by telling my students that she is her personal friend,” she continued. “The other day I show the tweet to the boys, but I record the reaction of the children and here I post the video and here it went viral and those of the foundation tell me, that they want to send the boys some water bottles to gratitude because they are talking about gorillas and the children made the box to raise funds for the foundation. “

From then on, the foundation’s production, in complicity with “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” asks you to link through the Zoom platform to investigate a little more about student interest. The surprise was that on the other side of the monitor appeared the presenter in full broadcast of the show to recognize the students and thank him for all his admiration.

“I still don’t believe it,” he said from the moment he covered his face with his hands and just repeated “Oh, my God!”. “For me she is a role model,” he stated.

“Ellen’s success came when she was 45, which is when she started the show. Before that she was successful, but when she declared herself gay, the doors were closed to her, and she was then at 45 years that gave her the offer of the program and that was when the success of it, catapulted in a giant way, “he said.

“And there are times that with this change, this transition here, I felt like,‘ My God, what else can happen to me ’, I go for 35 years and I haven’t gotten what I want, and I saw it as an example that if she, at the age of 45, managed to succeed being much older than me, it means that I still have a break from doing something, and I have always admired her a lot, “added Cubero Pascual, who is also the driver of Uber makes melindros.

The hardest decision of his life

Cubero Soto settled in Indiana two years ago after being hired as a teacher at an immersion school, where 90% of the subjects are offered in Spanish and autonomous learning is promoted among students.

He explained that he agreed to go to the interview at the Inter-American University in Puerto Rico without much expectation, because he did not see the way to settle in a place where he did not know anyone, apart from that, he would have to separate from his family, which represented the most difficult part.

On the island he worked for several years as a temporary teacher, having to change schools and housing with each beginning of the semester. In the first year of the semester, a school was assigned to Vieques.

“I started like everyone else, sleeping in a mattress on the floor and little by little, one day at a time, I was progressing step by step,” she shared. “I promised that when I came here I would not fall into this cycle of comparing Puerto Rico, but it is certainly impossible not to be able to compare, or at least consider the differences because they are so remarkable. The school provides me with many things. In Puerto Rico I won $ 21,000 a year, here I’m starting at $ 50,000, nothing else out there is a difference, ”he exposed, who still maintains employment at Uber and making sandwiches.

“I decided to continue here to recover what I lost when I moved and to be able to throw pa’lanteHalf a year after moving, my father fell ill with dementia, which was also one of the reasons why I had to keep working double, and so it has been a roller coaster of events that I they have taken me where I am “.

Yesterday the teacher made them one pajama party to the students to see together the transmission of the surprise that not only he received, but all his students.

“Here they found out that Ellen was going to make them ambassadors, she was going to send them the T-shirts, she was going to send them some money for school for technological aids, because with this children’s pandemic they have to take the computers to in the houses, and they break them or they get damaged, or they always have problems; that helped me, and they are unbearable, they think they are Hollywood stars, they say they know Ellen, “he said.