By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica

MIAMI GARDENS | At the time, Celia Cabrera was getting divorced, and the father of her children refused to pay for their Catholic school tuition.

"When he refused to pay, I said, 'I'll pay'," Cabrera recalled, and she began ferrying neighborhood kids to school in her station wagon. She charged $5 a week.

One day, a friend of hers who owned one of the private school buses — known as 'guagüitas' in South Florida — that took students to Msgr. Edward Pace High School told her, "Buy the guagüita from me, Celita."

"I don't have money," she replied.

To which her friend answered, "Pay me when you can."

"And that's how I began my life as a guagüera," recalled Cabrera, better known as 'Celita' to everyone at Pace High School in Miami Gardens, where she now heads the foreign language department and teaches Spanish.

"Imagine me," she recalled recently, "driving the bus, teaching at Pace, dropping off kids, going to Immaculate (Conception School in Hialeah), picking up my daughters and the other kids, dropping them off, coming home, cooking and then going to St. Thomas (University), where I would fall asleep (in class)."

At age 68, her kids grown and a Ph.D. under her belt, Cabrera's life is much less stressful but she still says, "I loved being a guagüera."

"No one has graduated from Pace without knowing who Celita is and without knowing about her Cuban coffee, or Coffee 101," said Elvita Reigosa, Pace's public relations and special events coordinator.

Hearing Cabrera say, "You want coffee?" during her classes is routine. She uses the Cuban brew to teach her students to use phrases such as "Claro que sí" (yes, by all means), "Por favor" (please) and "Por supuesto" (of course).

"'Sí, cómo no!', a former student told me the other day in the hallway," said Cabrera, adding that it's an educational technique that encourages students to talk, learn and share.

Serving coffee also breaks the stereotype that a teacher must be strict. She is not offended when some of her students call her 'Celita' rather than Mrs. Cabrera. "Why, that's my name," she says smiling.

Cabrera began teaching Spanish more than 40 years ago when she saw the phrase "Time, Talent and Treasure" at her daughters' school, Immaculate Conception in Hialeah.

"I have time, I have talent and I don't have treasure, but that inspired me and that's how I started," she said, recalling how she taught Spanish at Immaculate for 13 years as a volunteer, charging "not one cent."

Then one day, Pace High called looking for a substitute Spanish teacher.

"They lent me!" she said, referring to Immaculate. "It was their biggest mistake: 28 years ago I came here for two weeks and I never left."

Pace's principal offered her the job fulltime. When told she did not have a degree, the principal said she was an "innate teacher" and arranged for Cabrera to receive a scholarship from St. Thomas University.

Cabrera strived to finish as quickly as possible, taking more than 24 credits a semester while keeping up the 'guagüita' business — which by then included three buses — and taking care of her household.

"I finally graduated number one in my class, with degrees in Spanish and secondary education," she said.

Feeling more secure about her work as a teacher, she stopped being a 'guagüera'; one bus she sold, the others she gave away.

"Celita has many virtues," said Ana Garcia, Pace's principal.

Among them is her ability to make students feel welcome enough to ask for advice on any topic. Anyone who comes to see her is greeted with an enormous smile and a hug. All of her classes start with a prayer.

"Anybody can teach them math or languages. Celita teaches them how to overcome difficult moments. Her prayers turn into moral lessons," said Garcia.

"I have always been very fortunate," said Cabrera, which is why she likes to help others.

She recalled when she left Cuba at age 15 and arrived in Costa Rica with her brothers. They had no money but she obtained a scholarship for one of them to attend a Catholic school.

"He was very intelligent but I had to buy the uniform and I had nothing with which to do it," Cabrera said. "I went store by store, asking and begging, until they gave me two pants and a shirt."

That's where she got the idea for what is known around Pace as Celita's Closet.

"The students who graduate bring back their uniforms. She spends all summer mending them, washing and ironing, in order to give them away to kids who can't afford them," said Reigosa.

In Celita's Closet, the uniforms are organized by size and sell for $5 or less, depending on the student's ability to pay.

"One of Celita's most beautiful traits is her energy. She has a passion for everything she does and that passion is transmitted with love to everything she touches," said Garcia. "She's like a charger, a battery, always doing many things."

That energy is what led her to pursue more than a bachelor's degree. She went on to get a master's in English as a Second Language from Nova Southeastern University.

Then she noticed how much the school was spending on textbooks, so she wrote her own, on Spanish grammar and spelling for secondary schools, called "Nuestros Primeros Pasos" (First Steps).

When she finished the book she realized "it's not the same to put Celita Cabrera from Hialeah as Celita Cabrera, Ph.D.," so she pursued an online doctorate in literature from the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Peru.

She has since written other books: "Nuestras Raíces" (Our Roots) and "Nuestras Huellas" (Our Footprints). Her first book she dedicated to her father, the others to her daughters and grandchildren, and the third to her current husband.

She recently completed — and sold — a series of Spanish textbooks for grades two to six. She also has received many honors for achievements as a teacher, but the greatest, for her, is the recognition she gets from her own students.

"She is my rock. She is always there to give me energy when I need it," said Cristina Cruz, a former student and now a colleague in the language arts department.

"I feel completely fulfilled when I teach," said Cabrera. "When the students ask questions; when they want to know more; when I know they're interested, I am completely happy."

Not that her own family doesn't make her happy as well: Three daughters, six grandchildren and her husband, who was her boyfriend in Cuba. They reconnected 20 years after she left and have now been married for 33.

"I could have retired two years ago but every time I think about it I say, really, I don't want to go," Cabrera said. "Thank God, I love what I do."