The teacher from Puerto Rico realizes the dream of meeting Ellen Degeneres

Two years ago, Indiana-based Puerto Rican professor Pascual Cubero Soto posted a tweet lamenting that he sees more and more opportunities to meet his favorite personality, American comedian and presenter Ellen DeGeneres.

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

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

The student came to me to tell me facts from the book, like, “Teacher, did you know that the male gorilla does this and the female gorilla does that,” so I said, “Ellen has a gorilla base that she protects, so so that it can grow. “And there comes the whole dynamic where the child doesn’t know Ellen, and another student of mine says,” How can you not know Ellen, if Ellen is like Jesus Christ, everyone knows her, She’s super cute, and this is the anecdote I post on Twitter, about what happened in my living room “, said Cubero Soto about the event that provoked the immediate reaction of the famous.

“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 children’s reaction and there I posted the video and there it went viral, and the foundation called me, they wanted to send the boys some water bottles as a thank you for talking about gorillas and children made the box to raise funds for the foundation ”.

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

“I still don’t think so,” he said from the moment he covered his face with his hands and repeated only “Oh, my God!” “To me, she’s a role model,” he said.

“Ellen’s success came at the age of 45, when the show began. Before that she was successful, but when she declared herself gay, the doors were closed, and at the age of 45 they offered her the offer of the program and then her success catapulted in a gigantic way “, he said.

“And there are times when, with this change, this transition here, I felt like,“ God, what else can happen to me? “I’ve been going for 35 years and I didn’t achieve what I want and I saw it as an example of what, if at 45, he managed to be successful 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 an Uber driver and makes cakes.

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 the subjects are taught in Spanish, and autonomous learning is promoted among students.

He said he agreed to go to the interview at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico without too many expectations, because he did not see the way to settle in a place where he did not know anyone, besides, he will he had to separate from his family, which was the hardest part.

He worked on the island for several years as a temporary teacher, having to change school and place of residence at the beginning of each semester. In the first year of the semester he received a school in Vieques.

“I started like everyone else, I slept on a mattress on the floor and little by little, day by day, I progressed step by step,” he said. “I promised that when I came here, I would not enter this cycle of comparison of Puerto Rico, but it is certainly impossible not to compare, or at least to take into account the differences, because they are so remarkable. School offers me many things. In Puerto Rico I earn $ 21,000 a year, here I start at $ 50,000, nothing else is a difference there, “he said, who still keeps his job at Uber and makes cakes.

“I decided to continue it here to recover what I lost when I moved and to be able to pa’lante, and half a year after moving, my father fell ill with dementia, which was one of the reasons I had to keep working double and, well, it was a roller coaster of events that took me to where I am ”.

Yesterday the teacher gave them a pajama party students to see together the transmission of the surprise that not only received him, but also all his students.

“There they found out that Ellen would make them ambassadors, send them T-shirts, send them money for school for technological aid, because with this pandemic children have to take their computers home, and they break or deteriorate or always have problems; that helped me and I’m unbearable, I think they’re Hollywood stars, I say I know Ellen, “he said.