The one and only physics teacher at Miami High, Mr. Rivera helps students understand the physical world and every day actions that happen around them.
“I consider that all my students have a hidden ability,” said Mr. Rivera.“When I’m teaching I’m thinking that more than one of my students could be a physics teacher. So my dream is that my students are going to be physics teachers.”

Life at MHS
Mr. Rivera began his career at MHS as a substitute teacher. “I had a friend teaching at Miami High, and she told me how much she enjoyed working here,” said Mr. Rivera. After two months of being a sub, an earth & space science teacher at Miami High retired, and he applied for that position. After teaching earth & space for 4 years, MH’s former physics teacher moved to another school, and Mr. Rivera started teaching physics here.
Even though teaching physics to teenagers can be difficult, Mr. Rivera loves his job and does it very well. “The hardest thing about teaching physics is to stop teaching at the right moment when the students are able to work independently,” he said. “To me teaching is letting students make mistakes so that I can present them with a way to get the right answer and, at the same time, showing them their mistakes.”

Early Life in Cuba
Born December 27, 1962, Mr. Rivera is from El Vedado, Havana Cuba, where he attended Julio Lopez Elementary, Guido Fuentes Middle School, Saul Delgado High School and the Pedagogical Institute of Havana, where he majored in physics and astronomy.
He got an early start teaching. “In Cuba we didn’t have enough science teachers in high school, so they used student monitors who were trained do what teachers do. We shared the experience of a certain subject area and mine was physics,” said Mr. Rivera. “I did that during 11th and 12th grades. That’s why when I graduated, I went to the Pedagogical Institute of Havana, which is the institute where they train professors.”
In physics, his favorite topic is electricity and magnetism. Mr. Rivera points out that physics isn’t math, but in physics, you use math as a tool to understand the experimental. “It’s not about how much math you know, but how you use it,” he said.

Personal Life
With his muscular arms, Mr. Rivera, who doesn’t look like your typical physics teacher, is into sports. At the university, he was on the basketball team where he started lifting weights. His favorite sport to watch is basketball, and his favorite sport to play is ping pong
The most important thing to him is taking care of his family. He has his wife, his daughter Isabella who graduated last year from Miami High, and his older brother Hector who is a civil engineer and motivated Mr. Rivera to start his career in physics.
His dad was a lawyer, and his mom was a pharmacology professor at the University of Havana. Mr. Rivera was really influenced by the way his mother interacted with her students outside of the classroom.
“The way she spoke to students was so natural. She didn’t study to be a teacher but it was so easy for her and that really inspired me,” said Mr. Rivera. “She was a professor that had students in the house like they were family.”
Mr. Rivera, whose favorite food is paella, is a big reader. He recommends The Professor novel by Charlotte Brontë. His favorite movie is The Godfather.