Background: Seor Becker

In regards to my background as a Spanish teacher, I have been teaching Spanish in

the Shorewood School District for over a decade. I teach at three schools here in
Shorewood: Atwater, Lake Bluff, and Shorewood Intermediate School (SIS). I am the
sole Spanish teacher at both elementary schools, and I teach one section of seventh
grade Spanish at SIS. There are two other Spanish teachers at SIS, as well as a
French teacher at SIS.
I stay current in my field. I have my own personal Spanish instructor, a Spanish
professor at Alverno College who spent most of his life in Mexico. In addition, I am on
the Board at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukees (UWM) Jewish Latin American
Collections (JLAC), housed in the Special Collections Department of the Golda Meir
Library (http://uwm.edu/libraries/). I am also a member of Hispanic Professionals of
Greater Milwaukee (HPGM) (http://www.hpgm.org/). I studied Spanish in Costa Rica,
both times at a language school called INTENSA in San Jose, Costa Ricas capitol city
(http://www.intensa.com/). Ive also spent time in Mexico and Spain. And I am
continually investigating ways to diversify my materials and teaching methods. This
school year, I am focusing on using more music as Ive found music to be a particularly
strong method for vocabulary retention. I also created a brand new, extensive unit that
centers on poetry.
Students are surprised to learn that in my family, I am the only person who speaks
Spanish. I do not have any Spanish/Latino/Hispanic family roots, at least I am not
aware of any. The next question students generally ask is, if I dont have any family
roots associated with Spanish, how and why do I know Spanish? I fell in love with
Spanish, its culture, its beautiful sounds. And it goes to show you that if someone
wants to learn something, even if he or she does not originally have any background,
one can accomplish a tremendous amount in life.