From Puerto Rico to success: One man’s journey in education leadership

CLEVELAND (WJW) — When story time rolls around, it’s time to be quiet and give the speaker your full attention.

Little stories draw big attention from little folks.

Jose Gonzalez is the deputy chief of student services for Cleveland Metropolitan School District , a school that includes multi-lingual education , special education and integrated health services.

Gonzalez is always busy, but not too busy to miss story time in a classroom with children.

But to get in front of the classroom, he had to start from scratch.

“We moved here from Puerto Rico and although it is a U.S. territory, the English as a second language curriculum isn’t very strong so the island mostly speaks Spanish. So coming here to Cleveland, it was a shock not only because of the language but just looking at everything. The smallest things. Everything from what the houses look like, the language, the weather,” Gonzalez said.

When you’re a smart kid, it’s the language barrier that can drive you crazy the most. But CMSD teachers who understood the language struggle he and other children were going through helped Gonzalez become fluent.

That is what inspired Jose to become a teacher himself, but he became one a lot earlier than he expected.

“When I was 18 and ready to graduate from high school, my mother became a cancer patient. She had colon cancer and school was not an option for me,” Gonzalez said. “My father needed to stay home to take care of her so I had to go to work and the only thing I knew how to do was, I said, ‘Let me try the school system because I’m bilingual, I’m able to do it.'”

Gonzalez was good at it. So much so that he earned grants and scholarships that finally led to a bachelor’s degree and eventually several other degrees to boot.

The years flew by at CMSD, he went from teaching assistant to classroom teacher, to becoming the first principal and, you could say, the first line dancing principal at that of the first dual language school in CMSD.

“I think that those people who touch children and build that foundation for them to be future leaders for us, that’s key,” Gonzalez said.

And after 26 years with CMSD Jose said even though he has so much more responsibility now as director of student services, every day is a good day.

But he’ll still grab any opportunity to get back into a classroom where he started all those years ago. He said it was teachers and staff at CMSD that reached out to a kid from Puerto Rico because they saw something in him: potential.

“I was never privileged to pay for school or go to a very expensive college. I was just a normal kid that migrated from Puerto Rico that took advantage of those opportunities.” Gonzalez said. “If it happened for me it can happen for them. Just never quit.”

To find out more information about CMSD’s language programs and student services, click here .

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