Teachable Moments with Bad Bunny

There were two phrases overused and drilled into my head that summer of 2004 when I became a New York City Teaching Fellow. “Crux of it all” and “teachable moments.” At the time I was annoyed that my first instructor didn’t seem to have many other phrases in her vocabulary than those two.

But teachable moments. We talk about them all the time in education to the point that so many educators want to roll their eyes and say, “Yes! I get it!” And yet, despite with my own eye rolls in that 2004 graduate class and my own confidence to pivot and meet students in each moment in the classroom, I missed a big teachable moment that I continue to think about up to today.

I believe it was my third-year teaching in a Bronx high school made famous by alumni like Stanley Kubrick, made infamous by the gruesome murder of a beloved teacher at the hands of one of his students. I managed to secure a high-profile UN policy maker to speak at our school’s first United Nations Day All School Ceremony I was planning.

This was a big deal. You see, I worked at the kind of high school that had airport security, locked doors. The school wouldn’t let the students in too early which meant homeless students were left to walk the streets for about 1.5 hours each morning after they were kicked out of the shelter and at the end of each day, students were hustled out of the building as quickly as possible. I always wondered if anyone else saw the connection between the policy’s almost annoyance of students’ presence and students’ negative perceptions of education and school.  Many teachers (but not all) focused more on an assumption of criminality rather than humanity or potential in our students.

So, to get a school-wide ceremony approved in the first place was a big deal. The only other time I remember us having an all-school assembly was when Magic Johnson came to visit our campus…and the school security guards were EVERYWHERE.

So, as Coordinator of Student Activities, I worked my tail off to make it perfect. I bought flags from all UN nations and we had a parade run by the Student Council – which I either assisted or ran at the time. It was going to be awesome and I was proud to have worked so hard to give our students an assembly full of learning and community building that they deserved but rarely experienced.

Then came the parade. In alphabetical order, Afghanistan, Albania…we hit the D’s with Dominican Republic and there were boisterous cheers of pride from the large population of Dominican students at our school. What pride they had for their homeland! For their culture!

We reached the P’s. Poland, Portugal…then Qatar. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Hitting the Q’s led to a huge group of students leaving their seats and coming to me on the side of the auditorium with sadness, disappointment, anger, and lots of tears. Why would I disrespect them like that? How could I be so cruel? Some students suggested that maybe I was racist and bluntly asked if I hated them.

Hated them? I was so upset by the idea that I hated them. But all the thoughts were flooding over me together with confusion, frustration, and shock.

I didn’t realize that many Puerto Rican teenage students did not understand that Puerto Rico is not its own country. They didn’t understand governance and why they weren’t a part of the UN as a nation. They didn’t understand the status of a US territory (or colony if we want to be honest with ourselves). These teenagers thought I deliberately slighted them. Maybe I preferred the Dominican students. Maybe I didn’t like Caribbean students since I speak Spanish with a Mexican accent.

I was just flabbergasted that they didn’t know. I took it for granted that they understood. But honestly, how much did I really know other than the official category of territory. What a sad reflection on American education and curriculum that our own Puerto Rican and American students don’t understand their political place and presence in the US. And for me?

I missed the teachable moment. I was more hurt that they didn’t see my own intentions rather than be the responsible adult educator that catered to my students’ emotional needs and clear lack of factual information about their homeland in that moment. I focused on myself and told them to all sit down. I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of the handsome UN representative. I, for myself, didn’t want the assembly to be a failure.

From the outside, I probably looked like a frustrated teacher who was trying as patiently as possible to get her students to sit down so the assembly could continue without disruption. And eventually it did. And it was fine, great even.

But I missed the teachable moment. I focused on myself and not on my students’ intellectual and emotional needs.

And now I can’t stop thinking about Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl. I watched an artist and educator offer a lesson in the complex and nuanced world and culture of Puerto Rico. Beautiful neighborhood scenes of connection and belonging just like the beauty shop I used to get my hair cut in Inwood, New York City. There was raunchy dancing because every culture has its own way of exploring sexuality. And yet, what the non-Spanish speakers missed is that one of the songs was about defending a woman’s right to dance and express herself without being abused, touched, or groped without her permission...and message is anything but raunchy. There were glorious, dynamic scenes of the Puerto Rican influence on the rich and lively culture of New York City. There was a song about black outs which took me back to when I was in Puerto Rico last year and I drove in the pitch-dark morning through a tropical rain downpour to the airport slowly and with immense caution because of the power outage throughout the entire island and even at the international airport.

Bad Bunny carried the Puerto Rican flag with the light blue. That in itself requires even a quick google search to learn the significance of it in the Puerto Rican story. He called out the world to remember that being American is about our connectedness from the top of Canada to the  bottom of Argentina…or Chile. I will have to double check. We all have google.

But for all the hoopla, the show WAS AMERICAN because Puerto Rico is expressly right now, part of the Americas…and in the case of the US American Super Bowl, the show WAS AMERICAN because the government decided long ago that Puerto Rico was part of the USA, regardless of how imperfect the relationship may be.

But the show was more. Bad Bunny validated to Puerto Ricans and to so many Latinos who feel undervalued and unseen, that they matter. I watched a Peruvian woman react on TikTok at the performance with a burst of joy that he included Peru in the Americas and she was happy because “they always forget us!” I watched Cuban Americans glow with pride that they were included. I wish I could have validated my students back in that Bronx auditorium.

So, the crux of it all is this: I wish I didn’t miss that teachable moment.

I wish I would have not waited fifteen years after I stopped teaching in the Bronx to visit the beautiful, culturally rich, environmentally spectacular island of Puerto Rico. I should have visited the Dominican Republic too. Maybe I will soon...and leave the resort.

If you didn’t like the half-time show, it’s ok. It really wasn’t for everyone…but maybe it was. The Rolling Stones show wasn’t for me but I didn’t get mad about it. I just rewatched the Rolling Stones and, again, even though it’s not my kind of music, I can appreciate it for the people that music brings life and joy.

Maybe Bad Bunny’s show was for you even if you don’t speak Spanish and even if you don’t like his music because it still has an opportunity for you to learn something about others and see a complex, colorful and yes beautiful showcase of one culture’s history, regret, present, aspirations, hope, love, and optimism for a bright future.

It is indisputable that Bad Bunny loves Puerto Rico. And maybe if all you get from the show is a desire to love who you are and your community as much as he does, the world will be a kinder, gentler place.

So the crux of it all is that Bad Bunny is a master teacher who seized a global teachable moment. I can learn something from that.