Last Friday, World Champion slam poet and former teacher Joaquin Zihuatanejo visited Greeley West and shared his inspiring story to an auditorium full of AVID students as part of a partnership with the High Plains Library District.

Having grown up in the Barrio of East Texas, Zihuatanejo had dreams of winning the World Cup in soccer for The United States. While working on his soccer skills, he also worked on his academic ability.  He was awarded a full ride scholarship to the University of Texas but turned it down to follow his heart.

Today Zihuatanejo is a “poet, spoken word artist and award-winning teacher.” Zihuatanejo has won countless awards including the Teacher of The Year Award.     

Through Zihuatanejo career as a teacher he did not realize he was so uncommunicative with the deaf community. One of his students changed his perspective to which inspired his poem that won the World Cup of poetry. He also recited a poem about his grandfather’s beautiful garden and how he had grown as a human, much like the vegetables.

Junior Sunsarae Contreras said that, “it was extremely inspirational to see how somebody starting off with nothing can build themselves into something inspirational.”

Zihuatanejo kept his presentation full of laughter and related to the students with his powerful message.

Before leaving Greeley, he provided one more metaphor for the students he had just talked to: “I was driving late out last night,” Zihuatanejo said. “I saw sunflowers dropping, not because they were desperate for light, but desperate of dreams so dream big.”