Tag: education

From Migrant Farm Worker to Educator, a Principal Unites His Community With Quinceañeras

Gilbert Galván, principal of San Benito’s Veterans Memorial Academy with student. (Courtesy Avenida Productions)

When there’s a problem in San Benito, Texas, Gilbert Galván often comes to the rescue.

San Benito is a close-knit city of approximately 25,000, located near the center of the lower Rio Grande Valley – nearing the southernmost tip of Texas. Just as San Benito physically touches Mexico to its west, in the same way, the people and culture of both lands intertwine.

Gilbert Galván, who turns 68 this month, has played in integral part in maintaining the union of the two neighboring countries. As mayor of San Benito in the early 1990’s, he was instrumental in the building of the Free Trade International Bridge at Los Indios which provides easy access to the Mexican border cities of Matamoros, Reynosa and Valle Hermoso, and Monterrey.

And more recently, as the principal of San Benito’s Veterans Memorial Academy for the past seven years, he is known as the “Quinceañera guy.” A quinceañera is an elaborate party, resembling the American “Sweet 16,” which celebrates the transition in Latino culture from childhood to young womanhood. When he overheard some female students saying they couldn’t afford one, he decided at that moment to provide this opportunity for every teenage girl in the town who didn’t have the resources for one. The event has now become an annual town celebration, which grew from four, its first year, to nearly 75 young ladies, and five boys, being honored this past year.

Gilbert Galván, and his son Gilbert Galván Jr., at the Panamanian International Film Festival in Los Angeles.

This community event has been so impactful, one of Galván’s three children, Gilbert Jr., an attorney in the entertainment field, played a role in making sure this legacy was captured on film – along with Avenida Productions. The award-winning documentary, “Our Quinceañera,” directed by Fanny Veliz Grande will be screening next at CineSol Film Festival in South Padre Island, Texas, on November 23rd and 24th.

Galván’s very first quinceañera he volunteered to throw was as a freshman in college in 1972.

“We were 10 brothers and sisters, and I did one for my little sister,” says Galván. “I am always ready to help people. [And now,] my goal to make my students happy…I tell the students I do all this, because they are our future. We need to encourage our youth to be bold and not be afraid – to challenge the world.”

Galván says one of his greatest challenges working in education, for the past 42 years, has been dealing with the community to change the future of its students.

“Latinos have come up and improved and improved. I love that,” says Galván, explaining he has always been hands-on his whole life. “If there are problems on the bus, I ride the bus. I go to students’ homes and talk to their parents. They ask me, ‘Do you really love us?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ I tell them every time I see them that I love them.”

Galván understands the importance of these gestures, because he didn’t have an easy childhood himself.

“My grandparents came here from Spain,” he says. “They traveled from Spain to Cuba to Mexico, and finally to Texas through a grant.

Once in the U.S, Galván and his family became migrant farm workers moving from state to state depending on the harvest seasons.

“We picked cotton and okra in Michigan, Ohio, and California, and we picked apples and strawberries in Oregon,” recalls Galván about his farm laboring days which lasted until he was in the 10th grade. “We learned responsibility and money management, because my dad gave us money, and we had to buy food for the year…I was the first out of 10 to get a college degree, and when I did, my dad hugged my diploma for a week, or two, and that inspired me to help others in the community.”

Today, as a high school principal, he uses the money management skills he learned at an early age to plan out the intricate quinceañeras he throws.

“I had one for my daughter – it is quite expensive. We have dresses that cost $1,000 or $2,000 and they’re only worn once. [For the school quinceañeras], almost everything is donated to the girls,” says Galván, explaining that the local bakery offers to bake the cake, the dry cleaners and seamstresses offer their services for free, and a conjunto (band) volunteers to play the music.

He says he also takes advantage of the excitement that the quinceañeras ignite in order to have meetings, with the students, and talk about college and careers.

“I tell them how to have a better future so that they can be prepared,” says Galván. “I consider our community like a family, and this is a way to help. It makes them feel very important…and now when I’m out in the mall, they call ‘Mr. Galván!” and they thank me, and they say, ‘We have to take care of you when you get older.’ I love them all.”

https://youtu.be/0eSnxxlGDmw

The people of San Benito have garnered so much attention since hosting these unifying celebrations that other cities have started to take notice.

“Other school districts have called me for guidance,” says Galván humbly. “Houston already started them…The most important thing is the happiness and success that result. People start helping in many ways and communities come together.”

“I mainly want people to learn that there’s always hope, and dreams can come true.”

November 23, 2019
Author Bob Brody: A note of thanks, on my dad’s behalf

Bob Brody’s father, Lee Brody, as a boy. (Courtesy Bob Brody)

Ask me for my favorite Thanksgiving story and here’s what I’ll now have to tell you.

In 1930, a certain 4-year-old in Newark had yet to speak a single word. So his mother took her first-born son to see a series of physicians for a diagnosis.

It turned out that my future father had been born almost completely deaf.

Two of those doctors recommended sending Lee Brody to a private school, the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID), a kind of Harvard for deaf children, more than 800 miles away in St. Louis, Mo.

My grandparents, despite such heavy expense during the depths of the Great Depression — my Poppa ran a saloon — took that advice.

My father arrived at CID in 1931 and graduated in 1941. There, he learned to speak, to listen, to read lips and to function as well as any hearing person. That much I knew.

But then, two years ago, some old letters arrived in my sister’s mailbox, and from an unlikely source: the woman my father had lived with after he divorced my mother. We’d had no contact with her in the 18 years since my father died in 1997. Our family had long presumed such letters to be either non-existent or long lost.

One of the letters revealed a reality about my father that I neither knew nor ever had cause to suspect. In 1936, with my father now 10 years old and already five years into his stay at CID, my Poppa ran out of money to foot the bill. My father was pulled out of his classes to return to Newark and enroll in a public school.

My Nana then evidently wrote a letter to Dr. Max Goldstein, the prominent ear, nose and throat physician who had founded CID in 1914 and served as its executive director. She informed him that her son was performing poorly in the new school and pleaded for the institute to accept him back.

In response, Dr. Goldstein wrote, “I can readily appreciate your own disappointment in his limited progress (in Newark) . . . and your satisfaction with Irwin’s progress while with us.” She had “made a very frank statement of your family’s financial affairs.”

Dr. Goldstein then agreed to lower the annual tuition fee for my father to $900.

“I hope this concession in the tuition fee will make it possible for you and Mr. Brody to have Irwin return to CID next September,” he wrote, “for I know it will be for the child’s good and will contribute much to your happiness.”

As a result, my father returned to CID the following semester and stayed there for five more years. He would graduate from Weequahic High School in Newark, and then from Rutgers, among the few deaf students ever to do so.

Much later, my father — now age 42, with a wife, two children and a full-time job managing real estate — founded a nonprofit organization, New York-New Jersey Phone-TTY, headquartered in Hackensack. Partnering with IBM and AT&T, among others, he was instrumental in establishing a network of specially adapted teletypewriters, or TTYs, from coast to coast.

As a result, millions of people with hearing impairments could, in written messages transmitted instantaneously, “speak” with each other as never before. The TTYs also connected the deaf and hard-of-hearing for the first time to police stations, firehouses, hospitals, airports and government.

Later, my father received a personal letter of appreciation from then-President Ronald Reagan. Bell Telephone’s Pioneers Club inducted him as only its 29th member since 1911. The Stevens Institute of Technology held a memorial service in his honor that drew 500 mourners. Gallaudet University, the world’s only higher education institution for the hearing-impaired, named a scholarship after him.

My father confided to me more than once throughout my boyhood that without his education at CID, he might never have accomplished much of anything. And he often expressed his gratitude, justifiably so, to his parents for funding it all at considerable sacrifice. No doubt he learned only later about the letter his mother sent to CID arguing her case for his return.

And so a certain question now haunts me. What would have happened to him without Dr. Goldstein’s altruism? We’ll never know. So, in keeping with the spirit of Thanksgiving, Dr. Goldstein, I thank you. As a pioneer in education, you made possible a pioneer in communications. I thank you for seeing the future in my father.

This article was originally published on NYDailyNews.com. Bob Brody is the author of the new memoir, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age,” and you can read more about him here.

November 23, 2017
Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history

Bobby Gonzalez (Photo/George Malave)

Bobby Gonzalez has had practically every job you could think of — from a medical records clerk in a hospital to customer service at a utility company. However, he says it was at age 40 that he discovered his life’s calling and passion – storytelling. His favorite topic is his Puerto Rican and Taino heritage, which in turn, challenges his listeners to get curious about their own roots.

Ever since that moment of enlightenment, storytelling is what Gonzalez devotes his life to. At 65, he still resides in his native Bronx, NY, with his wife Maria, but sometimes he doesn’t even know where he’ll end up the next day giving a workshop or lecture. So far, he’s spoken in 42 states — in the past two weeks alone, he’s been at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina speaking about the racial and cultural diversity of Latinos. Next week, he’ll host his monthly spoken word event in Queens, NY.

“When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, I’m an educator through lectures and poetry,” says Gonzalez, who has also authored two books, “The Last Puerto Rican,” and “Taino Zen.” “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Occasionally, I get a phone call asking me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I do it. I’m not afraid to fail.”

His second favorite job in life, he says, was working at his family’s bodega, which they owned for more than 30 years.

“That’s where I really polished my speaking skills, and I heard a lot of great stories,” says Gonzalez, about the place which birthed his purpose. “It was quite an experience.”

He says his parents also played an important role.

“We were very fortunate, my brothers and I, to have had two Puerto Rican parents who always made the point to tell us where we came from and instilled in us a great pride of who we were,” says Gonzalez. “That inspired me to embark on a lifetime of personal research. I got my information from books and oral traditions – here and in Puerto Rico. When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to Puerto Rico, and I would sit at the feet of my great grandfather. He would tell me the stories of the old days, and I would roll my eyes, but I wish I listened more carefully.”

Gonzalez can see clearly now that his ancestors grew up in a different world, and that gives him the incentive to tell their stories. One story in particular which has marked him is one of his mother’s arrival to New York from Puerto Rico via a train from Miami in the 1940’s.

“She was very light-skinned, and when she got to Miami, the conductor told my dark-skinned grandmother to sit in another car,” recalls Gonzalez. “I have to remind young people they take a lot for granted – even the right to vote.”

Gonzalez remembers the exact date he began documenting his family roots by writing poetry.

“It was February 9, 1964,” he says without hesitation. “The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the day after, millions of kids around the world bought their own guitars and started to write their own music.”

Storytelling came very naturally to him, he further explains.

“Every day, I would go to the library, get some books, and then go down my block and tell stories,” says Gonzalez, who still has the same almost involuntary instinct years later. “I spend a lot of time in the Manhattan and the Bronx libraries,” where he sometimes also hosts spoken word nights for teens.

He says one of his biggest career challenges also took place in a library while he was telling stories of his ancestors, the Taino people, who are an indigenous people of the Caribbean.

“Once I was speaking in a library in Queens, and a man told me, ‘There are no Tainos left. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’ At the end, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m proud to be a Taino.’ I was taught by my parents never to say ‘You are wrong.’ We were all raised differently, so it’s important to dialogue in a civilized manner. We are all one.”

Gonzalez says he used this parental wisdom when speaking at the University of Mississippi last year, as well.

“We can’t have the same perspectives, and that’s okay, as long we listen to each other with respect,” he adds. “I meet students from Latin countries, and they don’t know about their indigenous heritage, and people who lived here their whole life don’t know American history. My favorite moment is always when people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”

Education is primordial for Gonzalez, even though his father only finished 2nd grade and his mom, 6th grade. He admits he never finished his bachelor’s degree in marketing, but he believes through his natural curiosity, he has learned so much more by devouring books on his own. And now he loves to share that knowledge with kids as young as pre-k, all the way to seniors.

“I don’t have the sense of fear,” says Gonzalez about what has helped him the most in life. “The times now are nothing compared to what my parents went through. Police brutality was a lot more common back then, there were no bilingual services, and immigrant groups lived in one neighborhood. My brothers, and I went to college. We didn’t finish, but we did it, because my parents sacrificed for us.”

What is the one piece of life advice he wishes he could tell his younger self today?

“It gets better every day if you make the conscious effort to improve yourself passionately and persistently.”

April 25, 2017
Jay Z’s 6th grade teacher continues to share real-life lessons

Author and educator Renee Lowden (Courtesy Renee Lowden)

Renee Lowden grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn and graduated from James Madison High School. She calls it “quite an experience” to have gone to the same high-achieving school as characters like Bernie Sanders, Carole King, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

However, no matter her educational attainment at the time, she says women didn’t have many career choices in the 1960’s.

“It was either a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, or get married,” says Lowden, who ended up going to Long Island University for education and teaching for 30 years. “I told my dad, ‘I could’ve been a doctor!’ My dad replied, ‘but you love teaching!’”

And that is the absolute truth. Lowden loved teaching so much, that after she officially retired in 1997, Lowden wrote a book called, “You Have to Go to School, You’re the Teacher: 300 Classroom Strategies to Make Your Classroom Easier and More Fun!” – now in its third edition. She says the title came from her father, because it was something he used to tell her jokingly. When her publisher wanted her to change the title, Lowden refused and says she’s glad she did because that’s how she started getting invitations to schools around the country to speak and motivate teachers to not quit the often difficult profession.

“I began teaching when I was 21 in the Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn – where Jay Z is from, and I chose to stay there,” says Lowden. “People asked me why do you stay there? And my answer was, ‘How could I not?’ When those kids like you, they love you.”

She says she was Jay Z’s sixth grade teacher, and that he was super bright.

“He never smiled, but when he did, he’d light up the room for me,” recalls Lowden vividly. “He was reading at the 12th grade level, and he was very needy, because his father had just left. He was a sweet, quiet kid. He was always standing near me. He was just so sweet and loved words…He told me he used to read the dictionary.”

The light-hearted Lowden, who describes herself as “a hippie” at that time, says she taught in Bed-Stuy about 15 years, and later then went to teach at another school in the projects of Chelsea, Manhattan.

“The biggest challenge there was sadly to say a lot of poverty,” says Lowden. “Kids didn’t have glasses. I would buy them glasses sometimes, and they craved attention. Years ago, parents would say if you have problem [with their child], ‘I’ll take care of it.’ Now, they blame the teachers. Now you don’t have the freedom to teach the way you wanted. I was lucky I had freedom, I taught a course in prejudice awareness and sex education – I don’t think I could now.”

Lowden believes she’s learned more from her students than vice versa. One example was when a girl with cerebral palsy came into her classroom to talk to the class. She told them, “I rather you make fun of me than ignore me.”

“She made everyone aware,” says Lowden, and then the next day, the same girl said everyone was saying hello to her.

Lowden, who now lives in Maryland with her husband of 48 years, says she tried to always use these real-life lessons when she taught her students.

“One girl told me, ‘I hate you because you raised my consciousness. Now, I have to fight the world,” says Lowden in her spunky manner, adding how she herself had awakened to injustice when she realized while in college that women needed higher averages than men to graduate. “When you become aware, you start fighting, and that I did.”

As far as what advice she’d tell her younger self with the wisdom she has now in her ’70’s?

“Never look back and say, ‘I didn’t try,’” says Lowden. “I’ve tried everything from skydiving to scuba diving…I was raised not to be adventurous, and my husband brought that out in me. Go with it! Also…Always thank your teachers.”

December 9, 2015
In My Mother’s Words: The importance of education

The one thing my mother truly laments about her life is not being able to get an education. Being a woman from a third world country made this incredibly difficult for her. She’s always said if she would’ve been given the opportunity she would’ve been a teacher.

This is one thing, among many others, my mother never wanted us to feel. She never wanted us to lament not having an education. Frankly, my brother and I didn’t have a choice. As kids, I remember her always telling us:

“Tú vas hacer abogada y Renecito va ser un médico.”

(You’re going to be an attorney, and René is going to be a doctor.)

For the record, neither of us became either of those but her whole point was to ingrain the idea of higher education in our minds. I thought this was the norm. I thought this is what everyone was told at home. I was wrong. I was also incredibly lucky.

Having raised us by herself she talked to us about a lot of intense topics early on. One of those included what she wanted for us if she passed away before we finished our schooling. These were always her words to us:

“Si yo me muero y ustedes no se han graduado de la universidad, el día que se gradúen ustedes van a mi tumba y me dicen ‘Mami, cumplí.’”

(If I die and you guys haven’t graduated college, the day you graduate you will go to my tomb and say, “Mom, I did it.”)

As an adult, I can’t imagine how hard it is to say those words to your children. Today is five years to the date that I graduated college. I’m a journalist and my brother, who also graduated, works as a marketing manager in Chicago. She told my brother and I the exact same thing when we graduated:

“Ya usted cumplió conmigo.”

(Loosely translated: You’ve done all I’ve asked of you.)

That’s all she ever asked of us, to get an education. She said it was the only gift she could give us. It will forever be the greatest gift she gave us.

Victoria Moll-Ramirez is a broadcast journalist based in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Miami, FL and had the great fortune of being raised by the sassiest, spunkiest, wisest, most hysterical Honduran woman in the world. Victoria’s mother, Bélgica, is 60-years-old, resides in Little Havana (Miami) and enjoys a good margarita accompanied by a heartrending ranchera. Victoria blogs about her mom’s funny and wise sayings on, “In My Mother’s Words.”

December 19, 2014