yo

Sobre mi ~ about Maestra

Estimados estudiantes y familias. Dear students and families.

HOW TO CONTACT ME AT THE BOTTOM. :^)

I have taught Spanish in elementary schools along the ridge of the Green Mountains in Southern Vermont, across the Connecticut River Valley in New Hampshire, and in Massachusetts.

I really enjoy sharing the beauty of the Spanish language and I am motivated to teach Spanish because it gives me and my students lots of opportunities to get to know our warm and fascinating neighbors, often close to home, or traveling South to México and beyond. I encourage all my students, even the little ones, to imagine someday traveling to visit and make friends.

My students will experience many different ways of learning when we come together for Spanish lessons.

I use: hands-on materials, song & music, visuals, student sharing & collaborating and small group work, movement, the written word, when age appropriate and most importantly, the spoken word. Children, especially primary grade children, understand words in languages other than their own when these words are paired with props or cues which point to their meaning. If I hold up a purple square and tell my Kindergartners, "Es un circulo rojo," they can easily chime back, "No, Maestra!" because they know rojo is red and circulo is circle. Hopefully, each lesson has something that will work for everyone.

Teaching second languages to elementary and middle school children is an area of education with lots of new ideas. I benefit from my memberships in National Network for Early Language Learning NNELL and in the Vermont Foreign Language Association VFLA. Another source of support and information is American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ACTFL. Languages are not taught how most of us baby boomers learned them, and that's a good thing.

I have traveled to several of the nations of Central America. I learned much of my Spanish while a student at Marlboro College during Summer Studies in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. While my students often ask, and I think hope, that I will be from some "exotic" place, I like telling them that I learned Spanish mostly in school, and just like most of them that I didn't learn Spanish at home. I want them to know that learning another language is do-able.... and for my older students that it takes time and practice.

Later I traveled to El Salvador and to Chiapas, México. And I hope dearly to visit again Central America, perhaps Honduras or Panamá. And I hope to set up more communications with my cousins in Spain.

I live in Putney Vermont. 23 years ago my daughter and I, with skilled help, converted a small hay barn into a passive solar heated house. She is a Wesleyan University graduate living in Northampton MA (!) with her husband and toddler.

I would really like feedback, ideas, and assistance for this site and how learning Spanish is going for your student. One way to get in touch with me is through your child's school or greeenough@gmail.com

AND I mean this sincerely: TO CALL ME.

I am super willing and happy to sing you a song you want to learn or help with pronunciation or what ever you need. Language is best learned via conversation!

I will sometimes not be near either phone as I am working on my farmette. So PLEASE leave a message (or text) AND a few times that I can reach you back via phone and I will happily return your call

My land line is 802 387 4677 . My cell phone is 203 383 0321.

If you have ideas to improve enrichment on this site, I am open to your ideas!

mil gracias, Greenough aka Maestra