Most often, I can be found working on projects for the Spanish classes I teach at Western Washington University. My niche is teaching intermediate language classes, particularly second-year courses.
If you take one of my courses, you can expect to spend a lot of time talking in class! I’m interested in community engagement and experiential education, so I’ve sometimes included service-learning components in several of the classes I teach and have taken students abroad to Spain, Mexico, and most recently Guatemala, where we worked with kids and teachers at Brillo de Sol.
I am always, always looking for ways to help students use their language skills outside of class.
I created and developed a course on Spanish for Healthcare Professions. It’s essentially a conversation class with a focus on health, and particularly the ways that culture shapes our perceptions of health and healthcare.
Over the past few years, I’ve been the Curriculum Coordinator for the Spanish workshops within Western’s Employee Language Program, which was created by former University President Bruce Shepard in order to support language learning and multicultural awareness on campus. In this program, upper-division language students lead conversational workshops for faculty and staff. I work with the student facilitators to develop the curriculum and help them design activities for use in the classroom.
Other recent projects include teaching a course as part of Western’s Viking Launch program. This program offers incoming freshmen a short, intensive course that introduces them to academic and campus life.
Since the fall of 2016, I’ve taught a Freshman Interest Group (FIG) that gives students the chance to explore what a major or minor in Spanish would look like at Western.
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