Señora Haller is a Spanish teacher at Aliso Niguel High School who teaches Spanish II and Spanish III.
Originally she is from the United States, but her grandmother is from Guatemala. Neither of her parents speak Spanish, and she learned the language in school.
She went to school at Irvine Valley College for two years and then transferred to UC Irvine (UCI) after her two years.
She majored in both Spanish and Global cultures during her time in college.
Sra. Haller did not always plan on becoming a teacher, she loved nutrition and psychology so she did originally think about majoring in one of those. However she also loved her spanish and global cultures classes and decided to go down that route instead.
During her time at UCI, she studied in Spain and taught English to young children. She studied in Spain for approximately four months.
It was at that time that she decided she really liked teaching and decided to come back to the United States and get her teaching credentials.
When asked about teaching another subject, she stated that she would most likely teach a history class like AP Human Geography, because it was also something that interested her in school.
“My favorite Spanish level to teach is probably Spanish I. Because I love watching students walk in the door with no Spanish at all and then by the end of the year they can have small conversations in Spanish,” says Sra. Haller.
She has stated that she loves seeing students try their best to learn something completely new to most of them, and see how they can grow and excel at it.
Sra. Haller chose to teach high school because that is where she could teach Spanish, however she has also said that she would love to teach elementary school and that it might be something she will try in the future.
She likes teaching high school because it is very interactive and she can have fun with her classes. She likes that high school students work hard and how they are able to talk about their personal lives as students.
She believes that students being able to talk about themselves in Spanish will help them better interact with a wider variety of people in the future, and she loves being able to help them with that.
She loves to teach her students how to talk in Spanish about things they are interested in such as art, technology and other personal things. Haller says that it is a great way for students to talk to each other and meet new people that they might not have known before.
She believes that classrooms should be a safe environment where students can make mistakes and be able to learn from them comfortably. She has stated that she tries to make sure that students feel comfortable speaking in front of other students because they are all learning together.
“The most challenging part of my classes are getting students to engage and participate, because they tend to be shy and not want to speak up in front of their classmates,”says Haller.
Another difficult thing she deals with is getting her students to try to use Spanish outside of class, because according to her, Spanish is learned much easier when students go out and experience real life conversations. She only gets so much time with her students, so she encourages them to go out and practice speaking on their own.
When asked about living in another country, she said that she would like to live in either Peru, because that is where her husband’s family lives, Costa Rica because it is beautiful and she could see herself retiring there or Spain because she has already formed a deep connection with it due to the fact that she studied there in the past.
Sra. Haller says that to all of her current students, she is proud of their progress in Spanish and hopes that they will continue it in the future.
