My name is Wendy Brownell. I started teaching Spanish in 1994. I have a Master of Science degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis in Spanish. I am National Board certified in World Languages Other than English, Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood. In 2010 I was named Missouri’s Distinguished Foreign Language Educator. In 2011 I was named Central States Conference Regional Teacher of the Year. In 2012 I was a finalist for the ACTFL Teacher of the Year.
Señora G 
I’m impressed. Spanish 1 and you’re teaching them saber and conocer! I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to borrow some of your ideas!
Hola, soy Stefanie Hicks. También soy maestra del Bachillerato Internacional pero sólo ya graduamos una clase. Esta es mi segunda clase quien va a tomar el exámen. Estoy intentando hacer todo correcto pero siento perdida muchas veces. Estaba mirando al cuento de Gabriel Garcia Marquez y no sabía cómo pudiera implementarlo. Gracias muchísima por sus enlaces. Si tiene algunas surigencias para mí, estaré muy agradable.
Hello Wendy, I was wondering what happened to your EN ESPANOL WIKI for the worksheets that you had created. I recently noticed that i was not able to load that page. I was hoping that i could get the link to them. My lesson plans were based off your wiki, and myself and my colleagues are devastated that it’s gone.
thank you so much. —-Patricia
Hola Patricia,
Alguien haqueo el sitio. Quitaron todos mis recursos y escribieron cosas muy groseras. Asi que decidi borrar el sitio en vez de tratar de repararlo. Tengo un nuevo trabajo este ano y no me deja tiempo para hacer nada extra. Voy a tratar de poner cosas en teacherspayteachers.com pero sera muy lento por todo el trabajo que tengo en mi nueva escuela. He agregado algunas cositas de Unidad 3 de nivel 1 pero por ahora es todo lo que tengo alli.
Hi, Wendy! I was looking for your site as well – I’ve created materials of my own for use with the Realidades textbook, but I wanted to save the En Español pages because I’ve taught with those textbooks as well too. If you would ever like help establishing a website, I’d be happy to maintain it – I’m very tech savvy. I maintain my own site with my materials as well as materials I’ve made using the textbook and workbooks. You were a life saver my first year of teaching and I introduced other teachers to your materials and activities. While I think teacherspayteachers.com is a great place to start – it’s nice to be paid for that extra work! – I’d be happy to assist you if you ever decided you wanted to share materials again.
Hi,
The issue is simply time. Even with Teachers Pay Teachers, I just don’t have time to take the multitudes of files and get them uploaded. Another issue is that I’ve changed my views over time about language teaching and learning, and I think a good number of the activities I created go against the current research and theories about how language is acquired, and I hesitate to put them back out there. In addition, I completely changed teaching jobs, and I do not use any of what I created with my current students, so it’s hard to go back and make time for those old materials.
Hola Wendy,
Me llamo Susana y enseño Español en High School ,y usamos el libro En Español, pero primeramente la quiero felicitar por el excelente trabajo que hizo en Wikilinks en Español 1 y 2, pero desafortunadamente cuando quise utilizar algunas de sus excelentes actividades me encontré que su website estaba cerrado, me gustaría saber si usted me puede ayudar y no le importaría que yo usara algunas de sus actividades, cómo puedo hacer para tener acceso a ellas? usted tenía actividades desde etapa preliminar hasta creo que unidad 6, le quiero aclarar que había enviado un email a Wiki links y me respondieron que podía usarlas si era para enseñar en mis clases pero luego el website estaba cerrado.
Nuevamente la quiero felicitar por su excelente trayectoria como teacher, y le agradezco si es que puede ayudarme.
Gracias!
Susana
Hola Susana,
Alguien haqueo el sitio. Quitaron todos mis recursos y escribieron cosas muy groseras. Asi que decidi borrar el sitio en vez de tratar de repararlo. Tengo un nuevo trabajo este ano y no me deja tiempo para hacer nada extra. Voy a tratar de poner cosas en teacherspayteachers.com pero sera muy lento por todo el trabajo que tengo en mi nueva escuela. He agregado algunas cositas de Unidad 3 de nivel 1 pero por ahora es todo lo que tengo alli.
¿Tienes twitter? También enseño IB.
Un millón de gracias por este hemoso blog! Enseño español a extranjeros en Colombia y sus recursos y su pasión por enseñar son contagiosos! Thanks!
Me encanta este blog. Tienes mucha información. Yo estoy enseñando este año español para hispanohablantes. Es un curso que de verdad no sé ni como empezar pero su blog me a dado muchas ideas. ¡Gracias!
Hi Wendi,
I was wondering what is your store’s name in Teacherspayteachers? And if you have there the resources for the Redes Sociales unit sample.
Hi,
I do not have anything for AP on the Teachers pay teachers site. All of the resources that I can share for the redes sociales lesson for copyright reasons have links in the blog post.
Thank you.
Hi Wendy I love your site just found you! I’m in my second year of teaching and trying to make interesting things for native speakers to do there really are so few good resources out there for them. I love your presentation about Cortazar’s La casa tomada. Hope you don’t mind if I use it. Thank you for sharing your great work. You’ve helped me think on a new level about this material. If
Yes, you are welcome to use anything you find my site! I started teaching heritage language classes after 18 years of teaching Spanish to non-native speakers. It’s a refreshing change.
Yes but hard to get out of the low level thinking I’m used to with so many yes, no, either, or questions.
Hi Wendy have you considered showing “The Others” as a follow up to Casa tomada? Lot’s of parallels there.
Hola, Sra. B! I am very interested in using your lesson on La Malinche. I wonder about how long you spend on the lesson you describe above. About 3 days, traditional schedule? More? Less? Thank you so much for making your work available to others.
I believe it was two class periods approximately 55 minutes each.
Wendy,
I am finding your information about first year AP teachers a blessing. Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough notes/suggestions. My 5 students are at greatly varying conversational skills and I find that I struggle with teaching the entire class in the TL. Any suggestions? Also, would you mind allowing me to use your thematic units for this my first year? I have so many resources that I am not dong much of anything well. Again, thank you for helping me to save my sanity!!!! Barb
Hi Barbara,
You are welcome to use my thematic units. For staying in the TL, a suggestion might be a clear signal that you will switch to English, or a box taped to the floor where you have to stand to speak English. That will make you more aware of how often you are switching to English, and perhaps resist the temptation to do so except when necessary. I have a collection of websites that talk about how to stay in the TL:
Teacher aids comprehension by using gestures and visuals, with frequent checks for understanding.
http://nclrc.org/about_teaching/topics/PDFs/FeatureCurtain-TeachingintheTargetLanguageFINAL.pdf
http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/TLE_pdf/TLE_Oct12_Article.pdf
http://blog.calicospanish.com/2012/10/19/strategies-for-staying-in-the-target-language-with-beginners.html
http://arlingtonstartalk.wikispaces.com/file/view/AISD+Startalk+Target+Language+and+Comprehensible+Input.pdf
http://www.susangrosstprs.com/articles/THREESTEPS.pdf (TPRS)
http://actflregionalworkshop.wikispaces.com/file/view/Maintain+Target+Language+Handout.docx
https://helenacurtainswiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/HO+Target+Language+ACTFL+2010.pptx.pdf
http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/best%20of%20bilash/targetlanguage.html
Wendy, Would you allow me to share your presentational speaking handout with Spanish teachers in our district? (of course I will credit you)
I love the suggestions! David Hardy CFBISD in Carrollton Texas hardyd@gmail.com
Sure! 🙂
Hi Wendy,
I read one of your posts about planning a trip to El Salvador after you had been there with your family. I would like to teach my level 4 students about a variety of countries this year, kind of like a survey of several countries. However, I don’t know much about El Salvador except that the new president seems amazing. Do you have any suggestions of what to focus on or any resources you could suggest. I don’t want to focus too much on gangs and war. I would appreciate any advice.
Hi Christina, I haven’t had a chance to teach this poem, but this lesson looks good https://www.teachingcentralamerica.org/salvadoran-history-through-poetry. The website shows the poem in English but you can also find it in Spanish. This also looks good, but it does relate to the civil war https://www.teachingcentralamerica.org/personal-creed.
Also, Salvadoran gastronomy is interesting in that names for foods mean different things than they do, say, in Mexico. For example, they have pasteles, empanadas, enchiladas, and quesadillas, but they are completely different than in Mexico. A Salvadoran quesadilla is a sweet bread made with cheese. Main crops are sugar cane and coffee, and they are trying to get cacao to make a comeback in the economy. Indigo dying is an indigenous tradition that is now an artesanía. A couple of Salvadoran artists whom I find interesting are Salarrué and Fernando Llort. I also like Roque Dalton’s poetry. In El Salvador, tourism is not well developed, nor is conservation of the environment. There are some attempts to protect sea turtles, for example, but collecting and eating sea turtle eggs is still common and accepted among most people.
Unfortunately, you are right–the civil war and gangs dominate El Salvador’s history. Of course, there is also Archbishop Oscar Romero and Liberation Theology in Latin America. https://www.npr.org/2015/05/25/409421365/examining-catholicisms-controversial-liberation-theology
It should be interesting to see how the new President does. His appeal was that he was not aligned with any particular political party (most of whom have reputations for being corrupt), but that also means he’s doesn’t necessarily have the support of the political parties with whom he will have to work in the government. It remains to be seen whether he can make many changes.