Close your eyes and imagine backpacking through the Swiss Alps in search of a mysterious tomb or having an existential crisis while Sigmund Freud cheers you up.
Now when you open your eyes, you’re in Ms. Cardona’s contemporary literature class, and each word that comes out of her mouth plays against your eardrums like a pianist playing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Teaching Career
English teacher Ms. Cardona has been teaching for about 35 years (since 1981) and will retire at the end of this school year.
“English is the most important subject,” she said. “It’s necessary to be proficient in Language Arts for everything that you do. Literature teaches you about yourself and allows you to connect with people you wouldn’t normally come in contact with or be drawn to. It teaches you about the human condition. Sorry, but math and science just can’t teach you that.”
Her experience as a student led her to want to teach and share that with all of her students. Being an English teacher wasn’t always on her mind, because she also wanted to become a writer and a journalist, but felt that through teaching she could truly share her passion for the English language.
Ms. Cardona said between teaching English and Contemporary Literature/ Creative Writing, she prefers the latter because she loves creating her own curriculum, and through that, she can foster creativity and intellectual curiosity in her students. “I like to design a curriculum using an interdisciplinary/ humanities perceptive i.e. combining psychology and language arts,” she said.

Retiring
Once the curtains close and the show ends, there’s always something that you’re going to miss, and for Ms. Cardona, it will be students here at MHS because, to her, they’re truly special, really appreciative, and “cariñoso”.
One thing that Ms. Cardona loved about MHS was forming bonds with her students. She admired how even though many of them had the weight of the world on top of their shoulders, with various economic and personal problems, they always had positive attitudes.
Now that Ms. Cardona is retiring, she said, “I will be sleeping past 5:30 a.m. every day, and not grade a single paper for the rest of my life.” She would only consider waking up at that time if she was going to lie on the beaches of Fiji.
Now that she has all this free time, she’s going to spend it with her family and enjoying her granddaughter. She might even take square dancing class, buy a small boat to go cruising in the Keys, try to read as often as she can, learn to meditate, and maybe sneak into Ms. Miranda’s class to learn Italian.
Her most memorable experience while teaching happened in her first year as a kindergarten teacher (hard to imagine) at Auburndale Elementary. She had a student who didn’t know how to jump, so Ms. Cardona made it her goal to teach the little girl how to jump.
“If she knew how to jump physically, she would be able to jump mentally through all the hoops and hurdles we face in life,” said Ms. Cardona.
After days and days of trying, with a rope smacking against her ankles and legs, one day, just like in some Hollywood movie, with cheesy slow motion and all, the student jumped. The wildest thing was that once she jumped, all her classmates came over and without prompting from Ms. Cardona, lifted her up on their shoulders yelling, “Hip, hip, hooray!”
The story doesn’t end there though—thirteen years later that little girl who couldn’t jump became a student in Ms. Cardona’s 12th grade English class. That little jumper, who started and ended her K-12 school career with Ms. Cardona as her teacher, went on to become an AP English teacher.

Education
We all go to Miami High, and so did Ms. Cardona, except that she graduated a long time ago. During her time at MHS, she had exceptional teachers who taught her to love literature, and she made great friends. One thing that she remembers most about being in high school was that she was the co-editor for the school newspaper back then.
No one is born a teacher. Ms. Cardona earned her bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Women’s Studies. For the majority of the time, she attended Florida State University, and also a college in Vermont.
One thing that she regrets about her college education is that she didn’t study abroad, because it would have been cool to travel and learn about the different places around the world. She also would’ve preferred going to a smaller liberal arts school instead of attending such a big state university.

Personal Life
Ms. Cardona was born in Havana, Cuba, on September 8th, which in Cuba is known as Dia de la Caridad (meaning Day of Charity). Three years after her birth, she came to this country. She is an only child, but has two wonderful sons and a granddaughter that is nine months old.
Married to her husband for 26 years, Ms. Cardona says that he is “a very nice man,” who puts up with her, and that “his name is not Mr. Cardona.”
When not in school, she likes to catch up on sleep, spend time with family and friends, and binge watch British crime and detective shows.