When Joseph “Pepe” Schraibman arrived in the United States from Cuba in 1950, he didn’t speak a word of English.
“I couldn’t say ‘I love chocolates,’ which I do,” he recalled with a smile. His first summer in New York, the 14-year-old future professor made friends while playing stickball, a game he knew from Havana.
“That saved me. They taught me colloquial language — words I can’t use all the time, except with friends,” he said, laughing. “For me, English was a process. It gave me humility.”
In an interview, Schraibman shared his passion for teaching and what he has learned over decades in the classroom. He won a Distinguished Teaching Award from Arts & Sciences last year.
Read the full article on the Arts & Sciences site.
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