Community Member

9-12 Spanish teacher; 7-12 ELL coordinator

Aug 21, 2020 1:41:02 PM

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I've been teaching Spanish since 1999, when as a clueless new grad student in a Spanish literature master's degree program at UNL, I was thrown into a Spanish 1 classroom with a book, a syllabus, and a couple days of teacher training. I loved the opportunity to share my enthusiasm for Spanish, but recognized that I lacked a lot of experience and expertise in teacher training. When I finished my master's degree, I decided I wanted to pursue additional study in applied linguistics so that I would understand how people learn languages, and how we can best facilitate that through our teaching. I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in conjunction with my doctorate in Hispanic linguistics, I pursued a graduate certificate in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education. I finally finished my program in 2009, 15 years after I started college. Along the way, I've taught a number of different Spanish courses at various post-secondary institutions.