From Cantera, for Cantera

The current principal of the Manuel Elzaburu & Vizcarrondo Montessori School serves the community that saw him grow up.

By Andrea Santiago Vicente

Riding his bicycle, playing spinning-top, going to the shore of the lagoon, picking mangoes, jobos and quenepas. This was part of José Ricardo De Jesús' ''happy and free'' childhood in the Cantera Peninsula. He is currently the principal of the Manuel Elzaburu & Vizcarrondo School, located in the same community.

Jose was born and raised in the community of Cantera. He lived there until he was 8 years old. He studied until the third-grade at the Sofía Rexach school, now the Manuel Elzaburu & Vizcarrondo School, and then moved to the municipality of Guaynabo when his mother got married.

''After I moved to Guaynabo, I had some problems adapting to the way of living there because it was not the same as here (Cantera). Here I was always in the street, I was always playing with my friends, but there I was a little more locked up and I didn't have that freedom,'' Jose shared.

But despite having moved, he never disconnected from the neighborhood where he was born, because every Sunday, he visited his grandmother, who remained in the Cantera neighborhood. And every time he passed by the Sofia Rexach School, he looked at it  and told himself that he wanted to be a teacher at that school.

Jose has worked for the Department of Education for 23 years.

Jose obtained his bachelor's degree in Physical Education at the University of Puerto Rico, Bayamón Campus. After he graduated, he worked for two years at the Doctor Clemente Fernandez School in the San Anton neighborhood of Carolina, and by his third year of teaching, a position emerged in the Sofia Rexach School. He applied for the job, coming closer to the wish that he made every Sunday, on the way to his grandmother's house. 

On serving the community where he grew up in, Jose expresses: "I have been blessed. In the same neighborhood where I was born, I studied, I grew up in, and where I aspired to be a teacher, I became a teacher and then principal... That is an experience that many people would like to go through, and thank God I have been able to live it."

During his 13 years as principal, Jose has lived many experiences and without a doubt,  he has many anecdotes. The ones he doesn't want people to forget are "those anecdotes of struggles. I would say that they are the ones that remain in my mind, because we fight so that children and parents can receive the education we believe in. A different education. ''

The Sofia Rexach Montessori Elementary School found a new home in the Manuel Elzaburu & Vizcarrondo School, located in the same community of the Cantera peninsula. This change came about in 2017, after the community's struggle to avoid the closure of the school and to obtain a larger physical space in order to grow and develop as a school community.

Speaking of "the community's other struggles," Jose says: "I am part of them, because I always say that this community is the one that serves the students, the one that is here, where they live. So I need this community to be well so that our students feel well."