Welcome to Profe Elote

¡Bienvenidos!

Hi! My name is Profe Elote... I mean Profe Elliott. (Profe is short for the Spanish word profesor which means teacher and elote means corn and sounds a lot like the Spanish pronunciation of Elliott + eh.)

I teach Spanish in a high school in south central Kansas. And of course, when I teach Spanish class I use comprehensible input and stories so students can acquire Spanish.

Why are you Profe Elote online when you are Profe Elliott in your classroom?

Well, at my former school about 80% of the students are Hispanic and almost all of those students are of Mexican origin and many of those Hispanic students speak and/or understand Spanish at some level. I taught Spanish and art for high school and art for 6th in the junior high. (They were in the same building.) That year I decided to have my Spanish students call me Profe Elliott instead of Mr. Elliott. (Sometimes I got called Coach Elliott also.) Well, although practically all of my students can pronounce things just fine with an American English accent, some of those who speak/listen to Spanish at home tend to use a Mexican Spanish accent after they say a Spanish word such as Profe. Since many of them like to eat elote, a few of them, being goofballs like 6th graders are, called me Profe Elote. (Elote is a Nahuatl word now used by Spanish speakers in Mexico and Central America to refer to corn on the cob, and specifically the way it is prepared and sold on the street. See the video below if you don't know what elotes are.) I didn't like being called Profe Elote. So, I asked them to stop and they did. The story doesn't end there though. So, I also forget names easily and randomly mix them up too. (I have to practice students names a lot to get them to stick.) In Spanish I class, there are two girls who always sit together, and while circling during a class story, I said the wrong name! Oh no! She was not happy. I said I was sorry and asked if she would forgive me. She said yes but that she could then call me Profe Elote. Apparently, news of my nickname had made it around to other students. The students know that I like fairness, so I made them a deal. If I messed up or forgot their name they could call me Profe Elote. Now I created this site and wanted something that would stick in people's minds and that wasn't already taken by the internet, so after a quick search to see if the name was used anywhere else, Profe Elote it became. And I guess it works well living in southwest Kansas with corn being grown everywhere.

Why don't you have a blog?

I don't have a blog because I don't like writing a lot, but my wife does! Check out her amazing books at www.JessicaLElliott.com. (And no she didn't pay me to write that, but the books are good though and she does have one eBook that's free.)