![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-1-224x300.jpeg\")
Hello,<\/p>\nHello,<\/p>\n
My name is Martina Gallegos, aka, Martina Robles Gallegos. I came from a rural town in Mexico at the age of fourteen; I spoke no English at all, and my Spanish wasn’t that great either. I had to learn both languages when I started school in the United States, as a junior high schooler. Since teachers didn’t know how to teach me, or what to do with me, I had to devise clever ways to teach myself English.<\/p>\n
I moved on to high school, with teachers doubting my ability to succeed. I started using the language I’d learned even though it was still pretty bad. It was here that I met some wonderful teachers who saw potential in me and trusted that I’d make the right choices; I wasn’t going to disappoint them. To shorten my story, I lost my mother to suicide when I was in tenth grade, but I studied super hard and graduated top ESL student. I attended community college, facing more challenges but persevered then moved on to university. There I faced more societal obstacles but managed to focus nevertheless. Unfortunately, I lost a sister to suicide, the second family member. Again I had to give 110% to stay in school. I graduated and then got my bilingual teaching credential.<\/p>\n
I taught for almost eighteen years until a work injury followed by a massive hemorrhagic stroke, coma, brain and heart surgeries ended my teaching career, but I tell people: and that was the best thing that happened to me; the nightmares began after I got home.<\/p>\n
I became a volunteer at my local hospital and elementary school since I was not allowed to even visit my worksite. I resumed my Masters but couldn’t attend ground school because of the driving thing. I then looked for and found an online program. I changed subjects but enrolled and, facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I was able to complete my Masters degree. I started publishing a month before my graduation. I graduated with my Masters and my daughter with her high school diploma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello, My name is Martina Gallegos, aka, Martina Robles Gallegos. I came from a rural town in Mexico at the age of fourteen; I spoke no English at all, and my Spanish wasn’t that great either. I had to learn both languages when I started…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":695,"featured_media":29546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-introductions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/695"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15997"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16717,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15997\/revisions\/16717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}