Rebecca Mengle, MEd

¡Hola! My name is Señora Mengle, but my students call me Señora Mango. I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas where I had my first experiences with diverse Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language. I fueled my love for this subject area while studying abroad in Salamanca and Barcelona, Spain. Travel is my passion and something I love to share with my students.

My journey to become a Spanish teacher began in seventh grade when I took Spanish 1A. After one semester worth of classes, my parents sent me to Spain for the summer to live with an unfamiliar Spanish family. Suffice it to say, I could only confidently produce one sentence in Spanish: “Quiero una naranja, por favor.” I ate a lot of oranges that summer. I also learned the necessity of language to bridge the gap between different groups of people and cultures. That summer I discovered an addiction to world languages, and knew that this passion would be extremely useful as a teacher.

Since receiving my teaching certificate, I have been blessed with many opportunities to teach in various educational settings. I have taught Spanish at the elementary immersion level, the middle school level, and the high school level. I also taught English to students in China through online classes. Each experience has not only given me the chance to share my enthusiasm with a diverse group of students, but also an opportunity to learn from my students about their varied needs and interests as learners.

On teaching: As a non-native speaker myself, I know the intimidation that many students feel in a world language classroom. I encourage all my students to take risks, to celebrate mistakes, and to think of them as opportunities for growth. I believe students learn best when they feel emotionally supported and invested in what they are learning. A main characteristic of my teaching is the importance of student choice. Students have meaningful learning moments when they have real-world experiences that interest them. I also believe in highly interactive online learning experiences. Students should feel they have gained enough exposure to vocabulary and grammar concepts through our classroom experiences to produce their own language confidently and appropriately. Our main learning target is always to apply what we learn in class to the real-world. I look forward to seeing how my students display this goal in their work!