About Sra. Sexton
¡Hola! ¿Qué onda? ¿Qué pasa? ¿Qué tal?
My name is Laura Sexton, and I am happy to be back in Gaston County after a year in CMS!
I have been teaching Spanish since 2006, including six years at Gaston Early College, but started my career as an English teacher in 2003. I graduated summa cum laude as a Teaching Fellow from Appalachian State with a BS in Secondary English Education in 2003.
I earned my National Board Certification in World Languages Other than English (Spanish) and a Master's degree from Appalachian State in Romance Languages, Spanish K-12 in 2013 as well as the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina's K-12 Teacher of the Year Award for 2016.
I believe that language learning is essential to a complete education, not only for the sake of the language itself, but for the habits of mind that language acquisition develops and the openness to other perspectives that comes with exposure to other cultures.
I have family in Mexico and have visited Guadalajara, México D.F., Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Playa del Carmen. I also recently got to join Gastonia Sister Cities to visit Perú and our counterparts on another continent. You can tag along on my recent and future travels through my Instagram account!
Painting really relaxes me, so my side job is as an instructor at Wine & Design in Gastonia, where I live with my husband, son, and daughter. And although I grew up in Missouri, my husband is a local boy from Gastonia.
Also, my kids are adorable.
See me teach and read more about my classes and background in this article from The Gaston Gazette!
Reviews from former students
Sra. Sexton's methods:
We listen to music to help us understand. We are able to run off topic as long as it is in Spanish. We do more interpretive based learning on the topics.
She teaches important life lessons alongside the actual language. We have leniency if we mess up. It makes me feel confident rather than dumb.
I never feel stressed because of this class and I know she grades harder than others but she’s also more leniant and relaxed about when or how you do things and she doesn’t grade based on favorites.
Sra. Sexton's passion
She laughs when we say silly things and pays attention when we try to speak to her in Spanish. Also, she makes an effort to get all of us to the level we need to be at.
Whenever we do assignments, she gets involved with them and makes sure that we know what we are doing.
You can see how passionate she is in the way she teaches. It rubs off on many of her students, including myself.