ORLANDO, Fla. – On Saturday, April 23, the streets of Downtown Orlando were painted in red, white and blue for the annual Florida Puerto Rican Parade and Festival.

The themes for the celebrations were “Education… Pathway to the Future,” and it was  dedicated to the municipality of Ponce, known as “The Pearl of the South.”

Central Florida high school marching bands took part in the event and educators were celebrated, including first-year teacher Matthew Tighe.

“Getting to know the students, teaching the type of material such as U.S. history, and they consider me as one of the cool guys so, I love it,” he said.

Tighe, 34, said he became a teacher because of his 11th grade high school history teacher.

“His classes were always fun. He made history fun,” Tighe said. “He’d dress up as different Civil War heroes. He just made it fun, and that was something I wanted to do.”

In just a few months of becoming a history teacher, he’s already faced some challenges from the coronavirus pandemic to several bills affecting educators.

That includes the Parental Rights in Education bill, what critics call the "Don’t Say Gay" bill and more recently, the "Stop Woke Act" which bans the teaching of critical race theory in schools – though Central Florida school districts said it’s not taught in local public schools. It’s a theory primarily taught in colleges and universities.

“So far, it’s been pretty easy [to navigate],” he said. “I’ve been finding my around it teaching the information while staying accurate to the education making sure everyone is comfortable with the different materials we discuss, different materials we look at because it’s our history and there are quite a bit of things that happened in our history.”

Despite some of those hurdles, seeing his students light up downtown Orlando with music made him happy.

“Just to see the joy on the student faces and they’re not worried about school work,” Tighe said. “They’re just happy about entertaining a crowd. You can’t ask any more than that.”

The parade began at 11:00a.m. on Rosalind Ave and Robinson St. to Central Blvd. to Orange Ave. before it ending on Livingston St.

After the parade, a festival began at 2:00]p.m. and was slated to end around 10:00p.m.