I am pleased to be your child’s Spanish teacher this year.  I am very interested in having your support and working as a team with your family in order to have a very successful school year.

I am a native European Portuguese speaker and was born in the United States to Portuguese parents. I learned Spanish throughout my life because of the languages being so similar. I’m very much involved in Portuguese cultural activities through the Chino local Portuguese community and am a member of the Luso-American Fraternal Federation which promotes the culture and language through educational opportunities.

In high school, I took 3 years in French and then went on to study Spanish formally in university. Even as a young person, I had a stong interest in getting to know other people's cultures and their languages. I attended California State University San Bernardino where I majored in Spanish with a Language and Literature concentration and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 2002.  Through my education, I fell even more in love with the beautiful Spanish language and various Spanish-speaking cultures and am excited to share my passion for the language and cultures with your child. 

Prior to becoming a teacher, I worked in the business world where I had experience in a Spanish language department for a major retailer. I also worked in the insurance industry where I constantly used Spanish to interview many people. These experiences gave me consistent use of the language where I spoke with many Spanish-speakers of different backgrounds. I believe that my previous work experience and also my interest in getting to know other people and their languages, have given me a better understanding of the process of teaching a foreign language.  I take advantage of my personal experience in order to implement my teaching methods and to convey the importance of being multilingual in the 21^st century world. 

I understand that every child has different strengths and weaknesses in their learning process.  Therefore, I am committed to having differentiated instruction in my class with a variety of opportunities for my students to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, learning a language involves repetition, constant work, and memorization skills.  I will request your support at home in order to reach our goal this year. 

¡Muchas Gracias!

Señora Alves