12/05/2022
My Spanish Story
I graduated in Gatlinburg-Pittman High School’s Class of 2000. GP was very higher education driven. We started freshman & sophomore years with Latin. By my junior year, I had plenty of electives to take. I decided to give Spanish a try. Well… my friends took Latin with me when we were starting high school. I was friends with one girl in the class, and the seating chart had her at the front of the class. I was stuck in the back near a guy writing out his Va**um orders for the afternoon with his best friend beside me copying my paper then passing it back.
When I met with my counselor during the summer before senior year, he encouraged my to take Spanish 2 with hopes that I would be able to test out of it during freshman orientation at UT. No way was I about to take Spanish again!
I got to freshman orientation the next summer, and I had to take the foreign language placement test in the language I had taken two semesters of in high school. I left the exam room resigned to take Spanish at UT. Not only did I have to take two 200 level classes that were required to graduate with a degree in Arts & Sciences, but I had to take the two 100 level classes to work my way up to the required level!
I started the 100 level class my freshman year. I moved out of the dorm and back home in June 2001. I worked at Guess Factory Store in what was then Five Oaks Mall before Tanger bought it. Since I was taking Spanish, I got roped into reviving my childhood summer gig of helping my mom and her friend teach Pre-Kindergarten Summer School in Pigeon Forge. They had a brother and sister who did not speak English. It was my job to communicate with them and use the Spanish I was learning in class.
I had to get out my textbook to figure out what they were trying to tell me. I finally figured out that the little girl was whining because she was hungry. That summer I began to fall in love with Spanish. I was not just using a textbook in s classroom and trying to communicate with a grad student and other college students. I was communicating, and making a difference with real people.
That was the beginning of the first Mexican wave that hit the Pigeon Forge area in the early 2000s. I fixed my schedule for the fall so I would have classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and be able to substitute teach one day a week and work the other day. I met more Latino children. I met their families. I was the first interpreter/translator at Pigeon Forge Primary.
That winter I also found myself depressed. I began praying the Prayer of Jabez, and God answered that prayer in ways I would never have foreseen! The Spanish grew in ways I could not have predicted. I was no longer the shy girl I had always been. I started teaching ESL at church. I began to think that maybe I could minor in Spanish. As time passed, I decided I could major in it. One day I was in class when a professor asked me where I had studied abroad. I told him I hadn’t gone abroad, and he said that my Spanish was too good not to have been abroad. I told him I went to Pigeon Forge Primary, Clintwood Trailer Park, and First Baptist Church’s ESL program. I made friends with the kids and parents I met. I am still friends with many of those first families on Facebook.
ESL class led me to court interpreting. I helped immigrants get their driving certificates and car insurance. The instability and lack of benefits in court interpreting led me to Carson Newman’s teacher ed program where I planned to learn to be a high school Spanish teacher. Again, God had bigger & better plans. My friend in the program told me that her aunt was a principal at a high school in Knox County, and she was looking for a Spanish teacher. The Knox County School System helped connect me with UT’s teacher ed program and an Alternative C license. I began teaching Spanish August 2005 after subbing once in a high school classroom. I taught at that school until June 2008 when I learned of a principal in Sevier County who was looking for a Spanish teacher.
I taught at the second high school from August 2008-June 2013 when I retired after a relapse of Multiple Sclerosis. In my time at that school, I taught Spanish 1, 2, and 3 and created an Honors Spanish 2 class. I did not like teaching from a textbook so I created most of my curriculum and used the National Spanish Exam vocabulary list and grammar guide. My last year there I ordered old copies of the National Spanish Exam and gave it to all students as an unofficial way to gauge my students’ Spanish progress and knowledge. Two students elected to take the official exam that spring, and they both placed well on the exam.
I have tutored privately occasionally since then with both children and adults. I translated a death certificate into Spanish and continued interacting with my friends in Sevier County’s Latino population. My job with Walters State’s RHiTA (reaching Hispanics to achieve) program has opened my eyes up to the need around me that had only grown over the last 20 years.
I am currently writing a Spanish workbook that I hope to publish and teach Spanish with locally in the coming months. I am also ready to test the waters of interpreting/translating again.
Please let me know if you would be interested in any of these services.
