Personal Statement
...ourth language. AFS helped me become aware of the many differences in English education between Puerto Rico and other countries and made me question the poor methods of teaching English in our educational system, in which students seldom develop practical communication and writing skills, even after they have studied English for twelve years. As a consequence, I promised myself that when I finally became a teacher, I was going to contribute in improving the way English was taught in our schools. After obtaining a B.A. in Secondary English Education, I started working for the Puerto Rico Department of Education. Through my working experience as an English teacher in the middle school, I have always tried to teach my students the skills needed to master written and spoken English, even if it meant adding to or changing the curriculum. Fortunately, in the last few years, several changes have been implemented on the English curriculum that aid teachers in developing these skills. By the end of my first year of teaching, I was admitted to the University of Puerto Rico Linguistics Program for graduate studies. I studied critical writing, rhetoric, and French, since I was required to study a third language. When I finished my first year, I transferred to the Department of Humanities and continued graduate studies in English-Spanish-English Translation, which consisted of 45 graduate-course credits. Two years later, hurricane Georges hit our island causing devastation. It destroyed the school where I worked, forcing the school community to move to other facilities that belonged to a high school nearby. As we shared the same building with other school, we had to meet our students in the afternoon. My working day ended at 6:00 p.m. and when I finally arrived to the university, the class was almost over. As a consequence, I decided to drop out. After three months, I enrolled in three online computer courses offered by the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico. When my school was repaired and my working scheduled went back to normal, I immediately applied for readmission to the Translation Program. A year later, my husband, who is in the Army, was stationed in California. This situation obliged me to take a leave of absence from work and interrupt my graduate studies to be able to move to the United States with him. In California, I was a homemaker during the day and an English language tutor for Hispanic kids during the afternoon. When I came back to Puerto Rico, I was planning to finish my master’s degree, but I was not readmitted because more than five years had gone by since the first date I applied for admission to the Translation Program....