¡Hola! I'm a middle school Spanish teacher, and my main blog, exploramos, is for anyone who takes an interest in teaching, languages, students, culture, or whatever else may show up here.
I started learning Spanish in 9th grade, but my real interest in language took off when I studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain, in 2007. I became addicted to traveling, photography, trying new foods and learning languages. My first plane ride was when I was 17, and I've been making up for lost time! After studying in Spain for five months, I studied in Guanajuato, Mexico; Cuernavaca, Mexico; and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. I've gone to Costa Rica with a group of students and I spent a summer teaching English in Chachapoyas, Peru. I've camped in the desert in Morocco, been to the world's least-visited UNESCO site in Paraguay, hiked to a mummy museum in Peru (which GoogleMaps doesn't even know exists!), spent a weekend on Lake Titikaka, and tried all kinds of foods that gross out my students. Since 2007, I've been to 16 countries and learned two languages. I speak English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and I'm currently studying French. I've come a long way since the day I told my high school Spanish teacher that learning another language was stupid and that I would never leave my hometown (Lo siento, Señora!).
In Spanish class, our focus is on using language in practical ways. We start using Spanish on the very first day of class, and we add to what we know every day. By the end of the course, students know our focus content as well as functional phrases that they can use in any situation that uses Spanish. We learn that when we study a language, rote memorization is much less important that using our new knowledge in authentic situations. Intercultural communicative competence (ICC, based on Byram, 1997) plays a large role in our goals and instructional methods. Language isn't just about understanding words on a page; it's about understanding the people who use those words, and understanding ourselves in relation to others, no matter what language we speak.
I love my job and my students--we laugh every day, we learn to make jokes in other languages, and we discover that communication isn't always about words.
