LaProfeGuay

After teaching Spanish at university level for over 20 years, I decided to explore teaching at Middle School level (since my own kids were moving to that level and the DUAL program in my area was growing exponentially). Many of my students now are heritage speakers, with knowledge of the language, but not as much of the culture it comes from. They are an interesting bunch. For them, I often create movie viewing guides with questions to follow and improve comprehension. Here I also have materials that I created for younger kids that I tutored and were developing their reading skills in Spanish. These materials worked very well for my students, and I hope they will for you too.

My teaching style is communicative. I teach Spanish guided towards real communication (spoken and written). In order to do that, I teach the rules of grammar, expose them to ample vocabulary, and ask them to create sentences with the elements given, as quickly as I can. I also try to expose them to elements of the Spanish speaking culture that may be less known (but probably useful when they get to the AP exam). When it comes to elementary school, my experience is tutoring mostly English speaking kids, placed in dual classes, who need to develop strategies to learn reading in their weakest language, or comprehension through vocabulary development and usage. Again, in this setting, my method proves to be guided towards communication.

BA in English Literature - University of Granada (Spain) MA in Latin American Literature, with minor in World Language Teaching strategies (Pedagogy) - University of Delaware PhD in Spanish Literature (Post Franco Novels) - University of Texas at Austin

After teaching as TA in UD, and AI in UT, I taught in two other institutions: Texas Lutheran University and Texas State University. I looked for the way to get my teaching certification (Spanish 6-12) as soon as it was clear that weapons were going to be allowed inside my classes (in all state universities in TX). I did not feel safe. Since I had been a volunteer at my kids' elementary school, and tutored several of their classmates, I knew I could teach that crowd.