Teaching with joy: A future in inclusive education is next for Nicole Ceballos Gonzalez

The date was Jan. 9, 2017. Her gray coat zipped up to her chin, Nicole Ceballos Gonzalez trekked through snow-covered Tarrytown, N.Y. to her orientation to become an au pair.

Then 19, she spoke no English. She had never seen snow. Her taxi dropped her blocks from her destination. And her wheeled suitcase kept getting stuck in slush as she navigated a treacherous hill.

“I thought I was going to die,” she laughs. She also thought she had made a terrible mistake.

Suffice it to say Ceballos Gonzalez, 25, no longer feels that way. Coming to America from Panama, she says, was the scariest thing she’s done in her life. And the most rewarding.

Now, as she prepares to accept her bachelor’s degree—with highest honors—in inclusive education from Rowan University and head off to teach bilingual special education in a Denver elementary school, Ceballos Gonzalez is grateful, excited, and understatedly proud.

Most of all, she says, she’s blessed.

“I’m thankful for the people who God put in my path,” the international student says. “I came here because I wanted to learn the language, travel and work. I thought I would go home after a year. But I had an amazing host family.”

‘She was part of our family’

Indeed, her host family, Michelle Medina, her husband, Braulio, and their two sons, made Ceballos Gonzalez part of their family from the very start. They even mailed that coveted coat to Panama so that she would be warm when she landed in America.

Despite Ceballos Gonzalez knowing almost no English, Medina insisted that she enroll immediately in courses at Rowan College of Burlington County. Three years later, Ceballos Gonzalez graduated with associate’s degrees in music and education. She was RCBC’s valedictorian, delivering a speech in flawless English.

“The first semester, I couldn’t talk to anyone. I just played music.

“Then, I started reading and watching TV with subtitles,” she continues. She read romances by Nicholas Sparks and watched “The Secret Life of the American Teenager’” with subtitles.

Within three semesters, Ceballos Gonzalez was excelling in regular English classes. As she cared for their children, the Medinas organized their work schedules to allow her to continue her RCBC studies.

“When I didn’t have the money to continue, they said, ‘We’ll help you,’” she says.

“She was part of our family, so we covered her community college tuition,” Medina says. “She’s very studious. I’ve never met someone who could study and enjoy learning so much.”

‘He’s one of the main reasons I continue teaching’

Ceballos Gonzalez was an au pair for the Medinas for two years. Upon her graduation from RCBC, she gained acceptance to Rowan and lived with the family in Mount Laurel on a student visa until 2022.

A gifted student, Ceballos Gonzalez, who will graduate from the College of Education on May 8, landed scholarships to fund her entire tuition. She was determined to excel.

She also knew teaching, particularly special education, was her absolute calling. Ceballos Gonzalez discovered that in Panama when she was hired, at age 17, to give piano lessons to a non-verbal peer with autism.

“He played piano better than me,” chuckles Ceballos Gonzalez, who traveled more than 90 minutes each week to teach. “He played by ear. That was his gift. We had a shared language.

“He’s one of the main reasons I continue teaching. I just loved my time with him. It gave me so much joy. I thought, ‘There are more people like him.’”

‘She will be an incredibly inclusive teacher’

Unlike the United States, Ceballos Gonzalez says Panama does not have a strong special education program.

“They didn’t start to include special education in schools until about two years ago. My goal is to go back in the summers to Panama and try to give back to my community,” says Ceballos Gonzalez, whose close-knit family still lives in Panama.

At Rowan, Ceballos Gonzalez stood out in class with her thoughtful questions that also made her classmates more engaged, says Jill Perry, director of the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and an associate professor in the Department of STEAM Education.

“She thought deeply about what we were doing,” says Perry. “Whatever resources and skills she has, Nicole finds ways to put that into practice to benefit other people.

“There’s just a lovely joy about her. She’s curious about the world and she knows who she is,” Perry continues. “She will be an incredibly inclusive teacher. She will make sure her students are seen and loved and cared for. She will work very closely with families. As a colleague, she is going to push other teachers on how they teach and the way they talk about their students.”

Recipient of the College of Education’s Cecil F. Miller Special Education Medallion, Ceballos Gonzalez is completing her teaching clinical practice in a sixth-grade bilingual classroom at Mastery Molina Upper in Camden. Last semester, she taught sixth grade special education at the school.

It’s joyful work, she says.

“My students are amazing. They are so funny,” she says, adding that she enjoys special education students. “That’s my favorite type of student. For me, relationships are key. The kids know that I care about them, that I will fight for them. The classroom feels like home. And our differences are our strengths.”

Embracing leadership

In Denver, Ceballos Gonzales will teach K-5 reading and writing in Spanish in a special education classroom through a one-year permit to work. Eventually she will get a work visa, and then apply for a green card and citizenship.

A master’s degree in inclusive education also is in the future, says Ceballos Gonzalez, who aced all of her teacher Praxis exams. Because she knows leadership skills are important skills for teachers, she pursued all three levels of certification through the Leadership Rowan program.

“I want to be a teacher leader who also empowers students to be successful leaders in society,” she says.

Like Perry, Medina knows Ceballos Gonzalez will succeed.

“She has her wings. She needs to fly. And she will fly,” Medina says. “Her success truly is a testament to what hard work and dedication can do. She will make a difference in a lot of kids’ lives. She brings a lot of virtue into whatever she does. You can just feel her spirit.”

The irony that she’s moving to snowy Colorado isn’t lost on Ceballos Gonzalez.

“It is going be nice to be surrounded by so much nature,” says Ceballos-Gonzalez, who has an adventurer’s spirit.  “Who would have thought that winter would become one of my favorite seasons?”

Every spring, Rowan University highlights one graduate from each school and college. Read more stories about this year’s featured graduates.