How am I able to teach Spanish after only receiving a minor and living the last 20 years in an English speaking town? One reason…Frida Kahlo! While studying art history, I was introduced to my mentor Frida Kahlo. Her art spoke to me and I wanted to know more about her. Many of her paintings include Spanish text. This text created a barrier preventing me to fully connect with this amazing woman. Even with the English translation, it wasn’t the same. I made the decision at that time to minor in Spanish. Shortly after, I traveled to Mexico to see her home and study Spanish on a study abroad trip all because of being introduced to the art of Frida Kahlo.

After graduating, I continued to use my Spanish as much as possible to keep my speaking skills strong even though I did not encounter many Spanish speaking people for direct communication. Unfortunately, my comprehension skills suffered as a result as well as my ability to speak in past and future tenses. I tried to always speak Spanish in Mexican restaurants and I tutored high school students. The one motivational trick I used to at least help kids let go of their frustration with learning Spanish was to remind them the more Spanish they learn the more they could say to their parents in a language their parents did not understand. Haha! This got them every time!

Fast forward 20 years, after staying home with my son for a few years and then teaching both special and general ed for 10 years, I received the opportunity to teach Spanish. Teaching in a private school enables me the flexibility to individualize my curriculum. I am not qualified to teach immersion, so I do not attempt to teach past and future tenses in which I am not fully fluent. My goal is to help students find their motivation or passion to speak Spanish by first helping them fall in love with the different Spanish speaking cultures while introducing the needed vocabulary to better understand a particular tradition, period of history, etc. Students do learn basic communication phrases from day one to help them get excited about actually expressing a full thought in Spanish instead of merely memorizing vocabulary. I teach many cognates early on to demonstrate how many words are easy to understand and read. I use my skills as a beginning reading and special ed teacher to get students reading in Spanish quickly. Finally, after teaching older students who tend to be less enthusiastic about learning Spanish, I introduce them to Frida Kahlo and share how she became my inspiration to learn the language. I then challenge each student to seek out their own inspiration.

Students share their personal interest, and I include the Hispanic versions of these same interests in my lessons. For example, I have one student who loves basketball and football. Next week, I will show students a video about the Mesoamerican ballgame from a great site I found that includes the history of the ballgame as well as the rules, equipment, and a video of Aztecs dressed in traditional uniforms playing the game on an original court: http://www.ballgame.org/main.asp?section=2. Once we watch the video, go over the rules, and have a fairly good understanding of how to play, I am going to take the students outside to the basketball court, where I will already have the flower ball court ring, which I made to look like the original, attached to the back of a portable basket ball goal. The balls were the size of a softball, and we will use a rubber ball about that size. I will play some traditional Aztec music that honors Xochipilli who was both the god of music, dance, and the patron of the ball game. We will leave out the human sacrifice at the end!

My students do not learn as much Spanish as most beginning level classes, but they learn a great deal more about the different Hispanic cultures that exist within these fascinating countries. This enables students to retain more of what they learn and gets them exciting about the next year! The response from parents has been incredibly positive and more than I expected. I am having a wonderful time helping 81 students fall in love with learning this beautiful language and the many cultures of the people that speak the language!

I really enjoyed reading your comment. So happy you and your wife are choosing to raise your baby bilingually. I love how your both are learning the language to better be a role model for the little one.

Good luck on this journey! You are both great role models already.

Kelly