Puerto Rican teacher achieves dream of meeting Ellen Degeneres

Two years ago, Puerto Rican teacher Pascual Cubero Soto, based in the state of Indiana, posted a tweet complaining that he was increasingly seeing the opportunity to meet his favorite personality, American comedian and broadcaster Ellen DeGeneres.

He never thought that the day-to-day dynamics of teaching would by chance lead him to fulfill his wish and much more than that, as not only did he connect with Ellen, but the production of the program earned them $ 10,000 for the school where he works and another $ 10,000 for him, among other items.

The educator, a San Sebastian resident, shared with Primera Hora this morning that one of his students was starting to read a book about animals, especially gorillas, a primate species that protects Ellen’s foundation on a campus in Rwanda.

“The student came to me to share facts from the book, like ‘Professor, you knew the male gorilla does this and the female gorilla does this’, so I said,’ Ellen has a gorilla foundation that protects them so they can grow And that’s where the whole dynamic arises that the child doesn’t know Ellen, and another of my students says, ‘How come you don’t know Ellen, if Ellen is like Jesus Christ, everyone knows her, She’s super nice, ”and that’s the anecdote I post on Twitter about what happened in my living room,” said Cubero Soto of the event that triggered the famous’s immediate reaction.

“When I post that story, she responds by telling my students that she is her personal friend,” she continued. “The next day I showed the boys the tweet but I recorded the reaction of the children and there I published the video and there it went viral and the foundation called me, they wanted to send the boys some bottles of water out of gratitude because they were talking. about gorillas and the children made the box to collect money for the foundation ”.

From then on, the foundation’s production, in conjunction with “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”, asked to link through the Zoom platform to learn a little more about the students’ interest. The surprise was that the presenter appeared on the other side of the monitor in the show’s full airing 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!” “She’s a role model to me,” he said.

Ellen’s success came when she was 45 years old, and that’s when the show started. Before that he was successful, but when he declared himself gay, the doors closed, and at the age of 45 they gave him the offer of the program and that was when her success catapulted in a gigantic way, ” he said.

“And there are times when with this change, this transition here, I thought, ‘My God, what else could happen to me?’ I’m going for 35 years and I haven’t achieved what I want, and I saw it as an example of what if she was successful at the age of 45 because she was much older than me, it means I still have a break to something to do, and I’ve always admired her immensely, ”adds Cubero Pascual, who is also an Uber driver and makes pies.

The hardest decision of your life

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

He said he agreed to go to the interview at Inter-American University in Puerto Rico without much expectation as he saw no way to settle in a place where he didn’t know anyone, apart from that he should be separated from his family , which represented the hardest part.

On the island he worked for a number of years as a temporary teacher, having to change school and place of residence at the beginning of the semester. The first year of the semester he was assigned a school in Vieques.

“I started like everyone else, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and little by little, day by day, I went forward step by step,” he said. “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 compare, or at least consider the differences because they are so remarkable. The school offers me many things. In Puerto Rico I made $ 21,000 a year, here I start at $ 50,000, nothing else makes a difference there, ”he said, who still maintains his job at Uber and makes pies.

“I decided to continue here to get back what I lost when I moved and to be able to pa’lante, and six months after the move, my father fell ill with dementia, which was also one of the reasons why I had to keep working twice, and well, it’s been a rollercoaster of events that got me to where I am today.

Yesterday the teacher gave them one pijama party it is up to the students to see together the transmission of the surprise that received not only him, but all his students.

“There 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 money for the school for technology tools, because with this pandemic, the kids have to take the computers home, and they break or get damaged, or always have problems; that helped me, and they are excruciating, they think they are Hollywood stars, they say they know Ellen, ”he said.