By CYRUS ENGELSMAN
Every year Redlands East Valley High School tries to better itself by changing rules and making positive changes around campus. One such change was the addition of Spanish teacher Shara Loy this school year. Not many people may know that she is new because she teaches Spanish I and II.I, classes with mostly freshman or sophomores.
This former victim services worker has a very friendly outlook on things whether it’s when she’s teaching or when she is hanging around her classroom. Loy’s teaching career has been going on for a while despite this being her first year here. She has three years of experience at a Montessori school, as well as working a lot in public and parent education in social services.
In the future, Loy wants to help kids in the foster system. “Over the next twenty years my sisters and I are planning to open up a boarding school for fostered youth,” Loy said, “ So it would be a preschool through high school boarding school but also a foster home so that whole families of children that usually get split up in the foster system can stay in one spot, and especially for kids that are very traumatized by the foster system, they’d always have a place to call home…”
Despite having a lot of experience with teaching, it wasn’t always the career she pursued. Once a social worker, Loy has also wanted to be a therapist. However, she decided to stay with teaching because it gave her a different perspective on things.
“It’s not the same thing every day, and it’s not even the same thing every period,” Loy said,
“It’s cool to see how much different the students change the dynamic of the lesson and you know either makes it a lesson that flops or a lesson that does really well, that’s what I enjoy about it.»
However, teaching isn’t the only thing she does. Loy also enjoys spending time going roller derbying, and is even on a team for the sport. She also enjoys sitting down and reading a good book with her book club.
Loy believes there is a lot of value in learning Spanish. «I would like to make a pitch for Spanish to be your foreign language of choice,” said Loy, “Not to fight with any other languages, cause we got wonderful French teachers and wonderful Latin teachers which is great, but in this day and age especially in Southern California it’s important for students to have a basic grasp of linguistic and cultural basics that are related to Spanish.”
She also feels learning a language helps combat stereotypes. Loy said, “So like cultural issues related to Spanish speaking communities and Spanish speaking countries. . . I think it’s important to kind of combat the negative mentality that our society has right now against Spanish as a language and Spanish speaking countries as societies.»
With her friendly manner and nice attitude towards people, it’s easy to see why so many people like her. Whether you want to learn Spanish, take tutoring, or just want someone friendly to talk to, it’s encouraged to stop by her classroom door at H-111.
Lea este artículo en inglés aquí: https://laplaza.press/2019/12/12/nueva-maestra-de-espanol-llega-a-redlands-east-valley-con-una-perspectiva-positiva/
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