Ben Lev, Spanish
I love Spanish and I love playing with children. Being a Spanish teacher brings those two elements together.
I started learning Spanish when I was 12 and developed and natural fluency as an adult when I made friends who only spoke Spanish. I have traveled extensively in Central America, Spain and Mexico. I correspond with Cubanos, Nicaragüenses and Dominicanos. I read online newspapers from Latin America and Spain, and most of my pleasure reading is in Spanish. My family is close to two farm worker families here in Sebastopol. We have visited them many times in their home town in Michoacán, Mexico. My daughters Sophie and Elena have a personal understanding of the benefits of being bilingual, like making friends, eating great food and getting invited to a lot of parties!
I taught grades K, 2 and 3 for nineteen years in a west Santa Rosa school composed of mostly Mexican families. Outside of the classroom I helped my students’ parents become regular visitors to the public library every three weeks. As a result, many school families now go to the library every three weeks and can better support reading at home. This project was the focus of my master’s thesis, which I wrote in Spanish in Mexico and Spain in 2009.
As a Spanish teacher I prefer using the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency with Reading and Storytelling) method because it makes language both understandable and useful. We have extended conversations in class and create compelling narratives about topics which genuinely interest the students: cars, money, romance, cheating, robbery, adventure…. They enjoy developing stories and fantasies, and when it’s going well, they don’t even notice that it’s happening in Spanish. It’s satisfying to watch them acquire and use their new language quickly and naturally, no short-term memorization required.
I encourage parents to share their enthusiasm for Spanish, or any second language. This is the key to your children’s growing bilingualism.
