In this episode of Growing With Proficiency, we’re doing something a little different.
Instead of hosting the conversation, I’m sitting in the guest seat while my friend and fellow educator, Bethanie Drew, takes over as host.
Bethanie and I have spent years talking about language teaching, acquisition, professional growth, and what it means to continue evolving as educators. During this conversation, she invited me to reflect on my own journey, from practicing law in Colombia to becoming a language teacher in the United States, and the experiences that transformed my classroom along the way.
While this episode includes parts of my story, what we are really talking about is something many teachers experience: the moment when you realize your students are working hard, you’re working hard, and yet something still isn’t quite clicking.
For me, that realization came when I noticed that my students could complete activities, study vocabulary, and pass assessments, but they weren’t communicating in Spanish the way I hoped they would.
That realization sent me on a journey of learning, questioning, and growth that continues today.
As I listened back to my conversation with Bethanie, four lessons stood out.
1. Great Teaching Starts with People, Not Plans
One of my favorite moments in the episode is when Bethanie asks about my mother.
My mother was a teacher for decades in Colombia. In fact, she received the Camilo Torres Medal for being recognized as one of the most outstanding educators in the country. At ninety-four years old, she still receives messages from former students whose lives she impacted years ago.
One piece of advice she repeated throughout my teaching career was simple:
Have a plan, but be willing to throw it away.
As a new teacher, I loved the first half of that advice. The second half was much harder.
I like plans. My background in law taught me to prepare, organize, and follow a sequence. I wanted every lesson mapped out. I wanted to know exactly what would happen and when.
But teaching quickly taught me that classrooms are filled with human beings, not lesson plans.
Over the years, I learned that some of my best lessons happened when I stopped trying to force students through my agenda and started paying attention to what they needed at that moment.
This lesson connects directly to language acquisition.
Students acquire language when they are engaged with meaningful messages. If students are confused, disconnected, overwhelmed, or emotionally unavailable, even the best-designed activity may not have the impact we hoped for.
Planning matters.
But responding to the humans in front of us matters even more.
2. Sometimes Success Can Hide a Problem
When I first started teaching, I was a textbook teacher.
I had not studied education. I spoke Spanish, I had a textbook, and I believed that the textbook contained the roadmap for successful language learning.
So I followed it closely.
I taught the vocabulary lists.
I explained the grammar.
I completed the units.
I checked the boxes.
From the outside, everything looked successful.
But inside, I was becoming increasingly frustrated.
My students were learning about Spanish, but many of them weren’t actually using Spanish.
Every year I convinced myself that the breakthrough would happen in the next level.
Maybe when they reached Spanish 2.
Maybe Spanish 3.
Maybe later.
But eventually I had to confront a difficult question:
If students have been studying Spanish for years, why are they still struggling to communicate?
Looking back, I realize that I was focusing more on coverage than communication.
I believed that if I taught enough content, acquisition would naturally happen.
What I understand now is that acquisition doesn’t happen because students memorize language. Acquisition happens because students repeatedly encounter language they understand in meaningful contexts.
The goal is not simply to expose students to vocabulary and grammar. The goal is to help students understand messages and make meaning from those messages.
That realization changed how I viewed everything in my classroom.
3. Growth Begins When We Become Curious
One of the stories I shared with Bethanie was about attending my first professional learning experience focused on world languages.
I remember sitting in the back of the room completely overwhelmed.
People were using acronyms I had never heard before.
ACTFL.
TPR.
IPA.
Proficiency.
Second language acquisition.
Comprehensible input.
I remember thinking:
“These people know things that I don’t know.”
At first, that realization felt intimidating.
I was afraid to ask questions because I didn’t want to sound inexperienced. I worried people would discover that I didn’t have formal teacher training and that I was somehow behind everyone else.
So I went home and started researching.
I read blogs.
I listened to podcasts.
I searched for answers.
And that is when I discovered something that completely transformed my teaching: there is an entire body of research dedicated to understanding how people acquire languages.
I know that sounds obvious now, but at the time it was revolutionary for me.
For the first time, I began understanding the difference between learning about a language and acquiring a language.
I started seeing why some instructional practices led to communication and others did not.
Most importantly, I started seeing what was possible for my students.
The moment we become curious enough to question our assumptions is often the moment growth begins.
4. Community Makes Growth Possible
When Bethanie and I talked about growth, we kept returning to the same idea: community matters.
When I moved to the United States, I didn’t have teacher friends. I didn’t have colleagues I could call. I didn’t have social media.
For a long time, I was trying to figure everything out by myself. I spent countless hours reading and learning in isolation because I was afraid to ask questions. I worried that my questions would reveal what I didn’t know.
Now, years later, I see things differently.
One of the bravest things a teacher can do is ask a question.
Growth accelerates when we stop pretending we have all the answers and start learning alongside others.
That belief is one of the reasons I continue to host this podcast.
It’s one of the reasons I love presenting at conferences.
And it’s one of the reasons I created Growing With Proficiency: The Spanish Teacher Academy in 2020.
What began as a place to support teachers has become one of the greatest sources of growth in my own professional journey.
Over the years, hundreds of teachers have been part of this incredible community. Every coaching call, every workshop, every question, and every conversation has challenged me to keep learning and growing.
The Academy was created to support teachers, but the truth is that the teachers inside the Academy have helped me grow just as much.
Because none of us are finished growing.
Every conversation adds another layer of understanding.
Every question opens the door to new possibilities.
And every teacher deserves a place where they can continue learning without fear of judgment.
If You’re Wondering Where to Begin, Here Are Three Places I Would Start
One of the questions Bethanie asked me during our conversation was this:
“What would you recommend to a teacher who wants to make this shift but isn’t sure where to start?”
I love that question because I remember exactly what it felt like.
When I first started learning about language acquisition, I wanted a checklist. I wanted someone to tell me exactly what to do.
But what I discovered is that meaningful change doesn’t begin with a strategy. It begins with understanding.
If I were starting over today, these are the three things I would focus on first.
1. Gain Clarity About How Language Acquisition Happens
This may not sound like the most exciting place to start, but it is the most important. When I first discovered research on second language acquisition, everything began to make sense.
I started understanding why students could memorize vocabulary and grammar rules and still struggle to communicate.
I started understanding why some instructional practices led to acquisition and others did not.
Without that clarity, it is easy to change activities, buy new resources, or adopt a new program while keeping the same assumptions about learning a language.
The more we understand how language acquisition happens, the better decisions we can make for our students.
2. Create Support for Comprehension
One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was assuming that if I asked students a question in Spanish, they should be able to answer it.
Now I know that to stay comprehensible, we need support.
Students need language they can understand and language they can use.
That’s why I often recommend starting with high-frequency language, question words, and common expressions that can remain visible and accessible throughout the lesson.
The goal is not to expose students to more language.
The goal is to help them understand the language they are hearing.
When students understand messages, acquisition is possible.
3. Ask One Personal Question Every Day
If I could only choose one strategy, this would be it.
Ask your students one authentic question every day. Not because it’s on your lesson plan. Not because it’s part of the curriculum. Ask because you genuinely want to know the answer.
How did you do last weekend? What are you going to do next weekend?
I love these resources that Bethanie created just for that.
Spend five minutes having a conversation.
That simple practice creates opportunities for meaningful communication, helps you learn more about your students, and gives students a reason to use language for its true purpose: connecting with other people.
Sometimes the smallest shifts create the biggest changes.
And for many teachers, this is a powerful place to begin.
Final Thoughts
One of my favorite moments in this conversation was sharing something that felt true throughout my journey:
I was terrified of changing, but I was even more terrified of staying the same.
Once I began learning about language acquisition, I couldn’t ignore what I was discovering.
I didn’t change overnight. I didn’t have all the answers. I made mistakes. I tried things that didn’t work.
I kept learning. And I continue learning today.
If you’re in a season of questioning your own practices, wondering how to support acquisition more effectively, or simply looking for encouragement on your teaching journey, I hope this conversation reminds you that growth is not a sign of failure.
It’s a sign that you care.
I’d love to hear from you.
What lesson from this episode resonates most with your own teaching journey?
And if you´re a Spanish teacher looking for that community, join the Spanish Teacher Academy today. And if our doors are closed, join our waitlist here.
