My Trajectory

My name is Ana I. Rodríguez Rivera. I have lived all my life in Caguas, Puerto Rico. When I was only 2 years old, my parents enrolled me in a preschool and that's when my school career began. When I finished preschool, my parents started looking for schools where they could enroll me with my brother. Finally they ran into Colegio Espíritu Santo. It is a Catholic school located in Hato Rey. It was there that I studied from kindergarten at age 5 until I graduated at age 17.

Since I was little I liked to play teacher with my neighbor. We spent the afternoons dictating to each other and corrected the work ourselves. Our favorite toys (apart from the kitchen) were a blackboard, a marker, a notebook and a pen. We could spend hours teaching each other new words and learning how to write them.

My favorite subject has always been English, and at the same time, that same subject was the most difficult for my neighbor. I dedicated myself to teaching this language to her. I used flashcards and wrote the name of various objects or furniture that she had in her room. Then, in game form, she had to walk around the room correctly labeling everything.

Although I loved playing as a teacher as I grew up, I didn't think that would be the career I would choose for my future. When I got to high school, my family, classmates, and teachers started asking the famous question "What do you want to study?" and I answered them with a firm "I have no idea". In eleventh grade I decided I wanted to study physical therapy because I loved sports and everything that had to do with athlete rehabilitation. Without thinking of another option or my favorite game as a child, I went to the United States, with an athletic and honor scholarship, to pursue a baccalaureate in Athletic Therapy. Although I was accepted into the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, I decided that it was better to go to the United States.

There I began to have doubts about something I thought I was sure of. I no longer saw Physical Therapy as a passion, now I saw it as something I liked to do but did not want to work on 8-5 for the rest of my life. I had many days of concern. One day after finishing a presentation the teacher called me to ask me some questions. She started by asking what was my concentration, to which I answered athletic therapy but recently I did not know if I wanted to continue it. At that moment she said a few words that have stayed with me, "It's that I saw you present and it seems to me that you have the heart of a teacher." Hearing these words made me remember what I loved so much when I was little. From that day on, I began to think that studying education would be something I would like. I took those words from the teacher as a sign, the first of two. The second sign was when I went with my roommate to a thrift store. There, I decided to go to the book area and the first book I saw was My First Year as a Teacher. With this I said I definitely want to try this career. It was something I had a passion for and deserved to try.

Since then I made all the necessary arrangements to be able to be readmitted to UPRRP. I entered my second semester of university at the Faculty of Education. From that moment on I knew that this career was my passion and would work hard towards becoming the best teacher I could be.