Wiser With Age

Tag: teaching

  • Legend rock guitarist, Javier Bátiz, on teaching Carlos Santana

    Legend rock guitarist, Javier Bátiz, on teaching Carlos Santana


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Legendary rock guitarist Javier Bátiz (Photo/Carlos Alvar)

    Javier Bátiz, known as the “Father of Mexican Rock and Roll,” has also been given the Spanish nickname, “Brujo del rock†– “meaning ‘warlock,’†he explains, from as long as he can remember.

    “I don’t know why…Maybe they think I’m a brujo, but I like it – it’s better than being called, ‘cockroach!,’†he says in his playful manner.

    The name makes sense, considering the definition of a “warlock” is “a male practitioner of magic,†and Bátiz says he’s had an inexplicable talent for playing music on the guitar, piano, saxophone and drums, ever since a young age.

    I asked him if he went to school for music.

    “There are no music schools in Tijuana,†he says, laughing deeply and with an energy that is contagious.

    Bátiz, now 72, and with more than 25 albums under his belt, has lived all his life south of the border in Tijuana, Mexico.

    “I still live in the house where I was born in,†says the award-winning musician. Just last year, the city of Tijuana had the street his house is on named after him.

    He was 12 when he first started playing the guitar.

    “I haven’t stopped since then,†says Bátiz. “My guitar playing is a gift from God. I take it very seriously that God gave me this blessing and to be able to share it. I like to teach people who want to learn. And some that I’ve taught, know more than me now.â€

    He remembers fondly how he would tell his various friends in high school, “You’ll play the guitar, you’ll play the piano,†until he formed his own band called the TJ’s.

    “We’d cross the border to San Diego for Battle of the Bands,†says Batiz.

    He then mentions Grammy-winning musician, Carlos Santana, and how they met when they were both young boys.

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    The young Javier Bátiz in the 1950’s. (Courtesy Javier Bátiz)

    “Santana’s mom saw me playing in a bar in Tijuana, and she brought him over,†says Bátiz, who was around 15 at the time. “She knew Santana wanted to play like me. I shared everything I know from my guitar to him.â€

    Bátiz says Santana started playing with him when he was 12, and he stayed playing with him for about six years.

    “He left to San Francisco in ’65,†continues Bátiz. “I went to Mexico City…We are still really good buddies, and we try to get together when we can.â€

    Bátiz continues to say it was when he moved to Mexico City that his music career really took off. He was heavily inspired by music by the blues sounds of B.B. King, Elmore James and Little Richard, which was pretty much unheard of in Mexico at the time.

    “I used to sing ‘Sweet 16,’ and they loved it…I worked with the big, famous musicians, and then I got married, and it all went to hell,†says Bátiz, laughing whole-heartedly again.

    “I’ve been married four more times,†says Bátiz. “But this time – Claudia and I – we’ve been together 25 years.â€

    Although, they’ve been together for the past quarter decade, as Claudia Madrid plays the drums accompanying Bátiz, they just officially tied the knot last year.

    “We’re grandparents. It’s beautiful – it’s really great,†says Bátiz about what makes their relationship solid. “We travel, we work, we go to the movies, we go to the Sizzler and Popeye’s [he laughs again]. The music will keep us together. We play good music, and we have a lot of fun.â€

    The 8-member Bátiz Band just played in Chicago, after having been in Los Angeles – where Bátiz was honored by the city on October 7 — and then they’ll go to Mexico City, and New York next month.

    “I’m very thankful, because I can still play,†says the musician. “I write the songs and play them – I play the piano, sax, all the instruments…It’s very natural. It’s a blessing.â€

  • Jay Z’s 6th grade teacher continues to share real-life lessons

    Jay Z’s 6th grade teacher continues to share real-life lessons


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    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.â€

    “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.”

  • NYPD lieutenant talks about becoming a co-author with his dad

    NYPD lieutenant talks about becoming a co-author with his dad


    Jon and Bernard Whalen are a father and son writing-duo who recently released their second co-authored book, “The NYPD’s First Fifty Years: Politicians, Police Commissioners and Patrolmen.†The book includes a look back at the formation of the New York Police Department in 1898 and the heroism, and even corruption, that has taken place within the organization since then. The book signing will take place February 18 in Queens, NY.

    Bernard, 57, is currently a lieutenant in the NYPD and has worked in the force for 30 years. He switched careers from a physical education teacher to the police force many years ago and has not left since. He says he also greatly enjoys writing in his spare time – something he learned from his father, Jon.

    Jon, 79, now a retired English teacher, began his career as a corrections officer at Sing Sing and Auburn prisons. However, he decided to leave that role for his love of English and teaching students. According to Bernard, switching careers was unusual for his father’s time, but he says watching his father follow his passion for teaching encouraged him to pursue his own passions as well.

    Later, Bernard came up with an idea to publish a novel with his dad. In 2000, they published their first fiction thriller, “Justifiable Homicide.”

    Bernard and Jon, or B.J. Whalen, as they call themselves, are working on other novels and hoping to extend “The NYPD’s First Fifty Years.”

    *Jon Whalen could not attend the interview due to health issues.

     

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.Kelly Carrion, is a multimedia journalist who believes in the incredible influence storytelling has on people, and how they view the world. That is why she has made it her mission to tell compelling stories about extraordinary people. Her articles have been featured on NBCNews.com, NBCLatino.com, LowellSun.com and Nashoba Publishing. She is a recent Boston University graduate. Follow Kelly on Twitter @kellycarrion12.

  • From reporter to teacher to US Hispanic Heritage historian

    From reporter to teacher to US Hispanic Heritage historian


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Miguel Perez at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. (Courtesy HiddenHispanicHeritage.com)

    Miguel Perez, 64, always wanted to be a journalist from as young as he can remember. Since moving to the U.S. from Havana, Cuba as a refugee, in 1962, he has accomplished that dream – and then some.

    In 1978, he graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and has worked as a reporter at The Miami Herald and The New York Daily News. He has also been a Spanish-language radio talk show host for the award-winning “Sin Censura,†as well as a political analyst for Telemundo. Today, he still writes a syndicated column and teaches journalism at NYC’s Lehman College.

    “I had an uncle in Cuba who was a reporter – he was my role model – I wanted to be like him,†says Perez. “I was teaching myself journalism before I got to school by analyzing articles – it was an obsession of mine…I was lucky to do all this other media, but writing is my first love.â€

    He says the teaching opportunity opened up to him about seven years ago, and he quit full-time journalism at that time to teach full-time, but his love for writing kept him writing his syndicated column weekly, and another idea developed as well – his Hidden Hispanic Heritage project.

    “One thing that motivates me is to educate people, and not even the average American knows about the Hispanic contributions to the U.S. – not even the average Hispanic knows…American history is taught when the British arrived – everything that happened before that is ignored,†says Perez, explaining that Hispanics played a heavy role in the U.S. 200 years before the British. “That is the theme of my work.â€

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Adina De Zavala, born in 1861. “Texas Legislature passed a resolution recognizing her ‘major role in preserving the Alamo and the Spanish Governor’s Palace’ and for placing ‘permanent markers on some 40 historic sites in Texas, many of which might otherwise be forgotten.’”

    He decided seven years ago that he would devote one Hispanic history lesson per column. The past year and a half, he took a sabbatical from teaching so that he could devote himself to traveling the U.S. and writing about the history tour.

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    “Founded in southern Arizona as a Catholic mission by Jesuit missionary and explorer Eusebio Kino in 1692, San Xavier del Bac still serves the descendants of the Native Americans Kino converted to Catholicism more than three centuries ago.”

    “I was on the road for 47 days and traveled around 9,000 miles,†says Perez, who resides in Union City, NJ. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve done in my life.â€

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Map showing where Perez has traveled to so far in his Hidden Hispanic Heritage Tour.

    He says he’s going back to teaching at the end of this month, but he’s already begun researching more historical sites to visit next summer.

    “This history project has become my passion,†says Perez. “I did my last weekly piece this week. Now, I’m going back to monthly till the book is finished. I still have three major states to cover – Florida, New Mexico and California. Maybe I should go to Alaska – there’s a glacier named after the Spanish there.â€

    As far as what piece of advice would he tell his younger self if he could right now?

    “I would do exactly what I did but one more thing – script writing,†says Perez. “With all I know about history now, I wish I had written a couple of movies. Where’s a movie about Thomas Jefferson? He was an amazing person, and I’ve never seen a movie about him. There’s so much more to tell than fiction. And another thing I’d like to do is [Hidden Hispanic Heritage] as a TV series. If Anthony Bourdain could go around talking about food , I can go around talking about history.â€

  • 70-year-old nurse practitioner, and teacher, remembers her most humbling moment

    70-year-old nurse practitioner, and teacher, remembers her most humbling moment


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Beth Farren (Photo/Richard Posey)

    Beth Farren, 70, continues living her life doing what she loves most – nursing, teaching, and fitting in the time to play tennis.

    Originally from Chicago, she has lived in Dallas for the past 33 years, where she volunteers as a nurse practitioner at a nearby clinic, teaches nursing online at Texas Tech, and sits on the board of the North Texas Nurse Practitioners – where she helps raise money for social causes.

    “I have lovely days,†says Farren, in her kind, soft voice. “Some days, I diagnose and treat women’s health – pelvic exams, breast exams, pulmonary exams…I also work in the neurology clinic and dermatology clinic. Both have specialty doctors, and I’m their nurse.â€

    Farren says she started teaching way before she became a nurse practitioner – a career which requires advanced coursework and clinical education beyond that required of a registered nurse.

    After getting her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Farren says she started to think about getting a masters.

    “The new dean of the nursing program called me and asked me if I wanted to come teach,†she remembers. “I told her I only had a bachelor’s degree, but she told me they didn’t have enough people with master’s degree, so she was asking those with bachelor’s degrees to do clinical teaching.â€

    So Farren made an arrangement with her then husband where he helped with their little boys in the morning.

    “I started, and I loved it,†says Farren about her first teaching experience. “I taught for them for 10 years.â€

    During her time in Tennessee, she also worked with women who didn’t have access to prenatal care.

    “They were just learning about premature births at that time,†says Farren who took a course in working with premature babies. “I learned that some babies would not have been premature if the mom had just had good prenatal care. I began to be passionate about it.”

    So while working on her master’s, she decided she was more interested in prevention and taking care of patients that would benefit from education.

    “I mentally left the hospital and pursued courses,†says Farren. “Nowadays, practitioners have a great variety of roles, but when I became a nurse practitioner, we worked outside of the hospitals trying to prevent people from going to the hospital.â€

    After earning her master’s degree, she moved to Texas for a job opportunity, and there she also earned her doctorate degree.

    “I always volunteered one night a week, when my boys were older, at the free clinic,†says Farren. “I’m nothing special. They were just opportunities I had.â€

    Some of those opportunities included going to Poland and Romania, who were moving away from communism, to teach standards of practice; as well as working at a Cuban refugee camp in Wisconsin one summer.

    “In the early ‘80s, Fidel Castro let a bunch of people from psychiatric facilities in Cuba come to America, and all these people showed up in Miami on boats and rafts, and the Army started taking them to different bases to try and take care of them,” says Farren. “The fort I was in was considered a family camp with a lot of pregnant women and children…a number of my patients told me they had been in prison, and I strongly believe a lot of them were political prisoners.â€

    Perhaps the most impactful moment of her long career, she says, was the moment she thought she might lose her son.

    “About 15 years ago, my son had a very serious emergency, and I wound up taking him down to the county hospital here in Dallas,†recounts Farren about her son’s gastric bleed. “One of my students was in the emergency room. She looked up and saw me, and said, ‘Dr. Farren, I’m going to take care of this.’ I realized in that moment that I was able to tell her how much blood he’d lost, and she was able to believe me, because she knew who I was.”

    The next day, she says another one of her students took care of him.

    “It’s just one of the most humbling things,†says Farren about the whole experience. “I had just done my job to teach these girls, and there they were when I needed them. It wasn’t anything special I did – just the rhythms of life.”

    She says her piece of advice to the younger generation is:

    “Remember to do what you love, and trust that it will all be ok,†says Farren. “We all worry so much, thinking, ‘Can I make a living doing this?’ ‘Is it even doable?’ I got my doctorate as a single mom, while I worked full-time and did part-time jobs on the side, and nobody in their right mind told me it was a doable thing, but it was.â€