My name is Santiago Ruiz de Gopegui Quesada and I’m the Spanish teacher at Mauldin Middle School. I’m from Spain but I have already been teaching in the States for 24 years (2000-2003, 2012-2015 in Virginia and 2005-2012 in SC). This is my eleventh year at Mauldin Middle but I have already worked for Greenville County Public Schools before (2005-2008 at League Academy and Greer Middle). I completed an MA on Linguistics and taught for 4 years in Spain before moving to the USA. After teaching in Virginia for 3 years I returned to my home country to work on my doctorate degree on education (2003-2005) which I haven’t finished yet since I consider my students are what really matters and don’t have much time left. I’m here at Mauldin Middle because I love teaching more than any other thing and I’m sure my students can learn many things from me (probably not so many as we learn from them). I know students are going through many changes at this age but I really love Middle school kids. I think there’s no better way to keep learning than teaching and I’m sure this will be a successful school year if we work together.