Bio

Hi everyone/Hola a todo/as,

My name is Jorge Abril Sánchez. I am originally from Avilés (Asturias) in Northwestern Spain, right on the coast, in a green rainy natural paradise surrounded by the mountains (Picos de Europa) and the Cantabrian Sea. I came to the United States 19 years ago in 2001 after finishing my BA in English at the Universidad de Oviedo, my regional university. I was seeking to obtain my teaching diploma through a university exchange with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Once I completed it, I applied for my Masters in Hispanic Linguistics and Literatures at the same university in Western Massachusetts. When I finished it, I transferred to the University of Chicago, where I completed my studies for my PhD in Spanish. Meanwhile, I also did academic coursework for my PhD in English at the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain. It has been a lot of years of study to prepare myself academically. I research on witchcraft, demonology, superstitions, legends and folklore in Early Modern Europe, and Spain in particular. You will always find me with a book in my hands reading about grimoires, enchantments and magic. I like to write articles about demonology and demonolatry, and some of my research has been published in books and journals.

https://uniovi.academia.edu/JorgeAbrilSanchez

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-abril-sánchez-8b771453

I have also been interviewed by international and national radios, newspapers and foundations, like the Smithsonian.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/visit-site-biggest-witch-trial-history-180959946/

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2016/10/trail-witches

http://es.rfi.fr/americas/20160205-recordando-ruben-dario-un-siglo-despues

http://www.nhpr.org/post/mortal-sea#stream/0

When I was close to finish my PhD at the University of Chicago, I applied for a teaching job at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I stayed there for a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish. Later, I moved to North Carolina to teach at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem as a Visiting Instructor of Spanish. The experience was positive, but two years later I felt I needed to come back home. As the landscape of New England is the closest thing to the one in my Asturias, and because my wife was brought up in Vermont, and her sister lives there, I got a job as a Lecturer in Spanish at the University of New Hampshire-Durham. I was very happy there, but budget cuts affected seriously the language department and I left. Soon I found a perfect place to work in the Upper Valley and I was very happy to be part of the community at the Lebanon High School. I made a positive impact in rising the academic expectations in our program and fostered some dear friendships with my colleagues. Nevertheless, the commute (95 miles and an hour and a half of driving each way) was too long and I looked for another job closer to my home in Lee, NH. I am still in contact with some former colleagues and students in Lebanon. However, I found a perfect match for my professional aspirations and hard working ethics at the Henry W. Moore School in Candia, NH, where I teach Spanish language to students from Kindergarten to Eighth Grade and where I am responsible for developing the curriculum and the whole program as the only instructor of Spanish at my school.

I like to extend my academic research to issues related to university teaching and education. As my résumé could show in further detail, over the last nineteen years, I have worked hard to complement my teaching experience with theoretical knowledge on university teaching and language acquisition. As a consequence, I have received certification on teaching skills from the Universidad de Oviedo and the Department of Education in the State of New Hampshire. I have studied methodology and language acquisition at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Chicago. Currently, I am completing my courses to satisfy the requirements of a Masters in Educational Studies at the University of New Hampshire-Durham and I am planning to pursue a PhD in Education to become the best educator I could be.

In the past, the University of Chicago has invited me to talk about my experience as an international instructor working across divisions in the College. Recently, I have been selected by the NHAWLT (New Hampshire Association of World Language Teachers) to give three lectures (about the use of creative writing in order to teach culture in the L2 in the Spanish classroom, about how to address racism and cultural stereotypes in the story of Ferdinand the Bull, and about the use of drawing and coloring activities in order to teach vocabulary in the Spanish classroom). I have been also selected and hired to work as an AP Reader for Spanish Language by ETS. For the last two years, in June I grade AP exams in Spanish from high students that want to receive college credit before starting their studies at the university level. I believe my work record demonstrates my flexibility and willingness to teach any level of language, literature and culture in a variety of contexts.

I love working with children. I have been teaching for 19 years (at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Chicago, Roosevelt University, Loyola University at Chicago, Reed College, Wake Forest University, the University of New Hampshire-Durham, Lebanon High School, etc.), as I said, and I work hard to help students reach their highest potential. In 2016, I started a language program in Spanish for children from the ages of three months to six years at the Child Study and Development Center at the University of New Hampshire-Durham. I trained and directed six teaching assistants to teach Spanish language at such institution. I met weekly with them in order to develop all the teaching materials before instruction. When the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures could not support financially the program any more, the parents of those children contacted me to tutor them in private lessons and for more than a year I taught Spanish to twenty-one students weekly at their houses. Their ages went from four years to eleven. I am still working with some of those students on a weekly basis. In spite of still being in middle school, after two years working with me, I am confident to recommend them to start Spanish in high school at the level of Spanish 3. Hard work pays off. They will be able to skip two levels of Spanish.

I have received teaching awards at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and funds for professional development both at Wake Forest University and the University of New Hampshire-Durham. I love to develop activities that are useful and pedagogical, but also entertaining. We normally sing in class, or watch some brief videos about Hispanic cultures. I provoke my students in order to make them think and question possible stereotypes about Hispanics and Latinos. I support creative writing in Spanish and cultural projects to expand our knowledge of the Hispanic language and culture. In this sense, in my classes students create baseball cards with biographical information of famous Hispanic and Latino celebrities in the US, such as Óscar de la Hoya, Jennifer López, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Sonia Sotomayor, Ellen Ochoa, Dolores Huerta, César Chávez, Álex Rodríguez, and many more.

When I am not teaching, or doing research, I spend my free time with my wife, Liza, and my children, Amaia and Aritz. We used to have a cute whippet terrier dog, called Panecito, who passed away in 2017 after rescuing her 13 years earlier from the Anti-Cruelty shelter in Chicago in 2004. We loved her very much and we miss her a lot.

I also enjoy practicing and watching sports, including soccer, basketball, tennis and cycling. I am a frustrated soccer player. I used to play for my school when I was in middle school. My grades went down and my mom interrupted my soccer career. Grades and an education are very important, you know. The guy who came to replace me from the bench ended up becoming a professional soccer player in Spain and a player for Numancia, Real Sociedad, Real Oviedo, Real Avilés and Marino, among others, and also with the U21 National Team of Spain. That could have been me!!! Currently, I coach soccer to girls U10 in the Seacoast area, where I live. When I coached soccer in Worthing, West Sussex, in England at the age of 21 during the summer month of July, our team of the Broadwater Manor School defeated a semi-professional team in Worthing. I have always wanted to be involved in soccer. Now, I both play on Wednesdays or Thursdays for a team named Sheffield Thursdays (named after English team Sheffield Wednesdays) in an adult league at Seacoast United in Epping, NH. We have won three championships. I am also a co-owner of a team in the Spanish fifth division, in Asturias, named Avilés Stadium, which we founded in 2015.

I am very excited about this teaching opportunity at HWMS and I am sure this academic year and my stay in Candia over the years are going to be super.