What would you think of a teacher who tells you that he is not a teacher and that F’s are good?   ESOL teacher Mr. Jorge Euceda said that he is not a teacher because teachers are dictators, and he consider himself as a guide. He also thinks that F’s are good because they make you try to improve yourself.

Even though he never planned to become a teacher, Mr. Euceda enjoys being an ESOL teacher because he can share his knowledge with his students. For him, critical thinking, collaboration and entrepreneurship are the most important skills students should learn. “My goal is to develop individuals that will be useful and contributing to society,” he said.

Mr. Euceda has been teaching just for four months here at Miami High, but has been teaching thirty-five years in other schools including Miami Springs Middle, Campbell Drive Middle, Citrus Grove Middle, and in the bilingual department for MDCPS.

Mr. Euceda was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and arrived in Chicago, Illinois, in 1964 when he was six years old. He said that he had an amazing childhood, because at that time he became very independent, shoveling snow, delivering newspapers, cutting grass, and painting fences for money. He played hockey, basketball, football and baseball and attended Oscar Mayer Elementary School in Chicago.   He dropped out of Prosser High School in Chicago in the 10^th grade because his classes were boring. At fifteen and sixteen years, old, Mr. Euceda worked as a cook and as a busboy in a restaurant.    When he was seventeen years old, he decided to join the Army Reserve, and at the age of eighteen, because the Army required a high school diploma, Mr. Euceda returned to school to complete the GED program.     Then he served for 4 years in the US Army, for the 82^nd Airborne infantry division where he jumped with a parachute about fifty times from an airplane. While serving in the Army he was trained at Fort Garden in Georgia, Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Front Bragg in North Carolina, and Fort Davies in Panama.   After serving in the army, Mr. Euceda traveled to Honduras and Nicaragua where he taught English to adults. “That’s how I get stuck teaching English,” he said.    Finally, at twenty-eight years old, he decided to teach English as a second language and he returned to Miami where he studied at Miami Dade Community College and then transfered to FIU where he studied English Literature and Spanish Literature and earned a Masters in TESOL, and a certification in Linguistics.