La casa de aprendizaje

I have taught Spanish for over 13 years all levels: * Spanish I & I Pre-AP/IB * Spanish II & II Pre-AP/IB * Spanish III Pre-AP/IB * IB Spanish IV * IB Spanish V

My motto as a teacher from the beginning has been to engage students by tricking them into learning. By this I mean that as a teacher I desire for them not only to learn the content, but also to connect with it in an interesting, challenging and personal way while having fun. I’ve found that students are much more willing to learn when they’re interested in and see value in what we are learning. When their work is deemed relevant to their world, when I make even the seemingly boring into something interesting, they more often than not meet my expectations. As I bring the Spanish language and Spanish culture into context through real-world application such as Skyping colleagues around the world and corresponding with pen pals in Xochimilco, Mexico, students see value in what they learn. The less bookwork I give and the more realistic experiences I provide, the more they’re engaged. Several years ago I took a group of sixteen students to Spain in which many described as a life-changing experience. This coming June I will take eighteen students to Costa Rica as well in an attempt to make Spanish valuable to them. I’ve experienced that a passionate teacher begets passionate students. I generally create activities that promote self-discovery, such as creating stories that allow them to figure out grammar and vocabulary in groups. I become a facilitator rather than the dictator of knowledge. I pre-teach concepts to help make connections later on down the road. We learn in small communities of groups of four, as language in learned in communally. In my Spanish classes, we start each day reading a short novel or watching a telenovela called Extr@, in which they listen for cognates, hypothesize what will happen, summarize, create questions, etc. What we do varies day-to-day. I’ve adapted various games to teach vocabulary and grammar, such as Jeopardy, Battleship, Concentration, Taboo, sentence cut-ups, skits, situations, Go Fish, etc. We’ve done scavenger hunts throughout the school to learn directions and created obituaries and chalk outlines of people when talking about body parts and wounds. We do a variety of learning projects to put the information in the context of reality by creating and presenting “Who am I” projects, “My house” books, “In my city” maps, daily routine presentations, “When I was a child” Voicethreads, fairytales and children’s books, etc. We use technologies such as Canvas, WordPlay, Skype, Conjuguemos, Voicethread, etc. to aid mastery of the content.

Honors College Presidential Scholarship, 4 years Bank One Scholarship, 4 years Teacher’s College Scholarship, 2 years Vicki Yoakum Foreign Language Scholarship, 1 year Nicole King Scholarship for Foreign Study, 1 year Department of Modern Languages and Classics Scholarship, 1 year Earl Johnson Teacher’s College Memorial Scholarship, 1 year National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 4 years Student Nominated Most Creative Teacher, Boyd High School 2007 Eagle Awards for creativity Fulbright award for education, 2012 Nominated for 2015 Humanities Texas Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award

Bachelors in Spanish and Education

Bilingually proficient, English and Spanish * Recruiter, Indiana Department of Education, Indianapolis, IN - Migrant Education Program, May 2002 - 2005 (temporary summer and fall positions) - Located and interviewed migrant agricultural families in Spanish - Determined eligibility in Spanish for educational services for migratory children * Study Abroad, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile, March - July, 2004 - Studied Spanish Conversation and Composition, Grammar, Chilean History, Culture, and South American Literature - Lived in immersion language setting for spring semester * Travel Abroad, Honduras, Belize, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Puerto Rico - Expanded experiential knowledge regarding the diversity and cultures of various Spanish-speaking countries and improved language proficiency