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Teaching a new language is just part of the job for Camargo
COLERIDGE – Jill Camargo recently received the AATSP-Nebraska Teacher of the Year award (Nebraska Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese).
It doesn’t take long to see why she was a top candidate for this honor — her genuine love for language and desire to help her students prepare to succeed in the real world — makes her an obvious choice for this award.
She was surprisingly shocked when she received the email from Supt. Jeremy Christiansen that she was the recipient of this award.
“It’s awesome to be recognized by people,” she said.
What was especially impactful for her was that several of her original inspirations reached out to her and told her she deserved this award.
These individuals were people that set the bar for her on how to be a good teacher. Looking back, she said when she began teaching, she never thought she would achieve this honor.
She is originally from the Grand Island-Central City area, but has lived in a variety of places in addition to Nebraska such as: Colorado, Minneapolis and Nicaragua.
She developed a deep love for languages at an early age.
This was fostered by her grandparents speaking German and watching the cartoon Speedy Gonzalez.
Her high school Spanish teacher inspired her to take up and then teach Spanish.
She took Jill’s class on a trip to Mexico which greatly impacted Jill’s decision to teach Spanish. She began to see it as a way to see more of the world.
Jill has immense experience as a teacher. She has taught for 20-plus years, not always teaching Spanish, though.
She has taught English, Spanish, drama, journalism, English as a Secondary Language Online, and English as a Second Language in Nicaragua.
Her time teaching in Nicaragua was with the Peace Corps. This involved teaching English as a foreign language.
Her teaching philosophy is part old school of repeating words and part using technology or something written in Spanish.
In addition to being a teacher, Jill has a variety of other interests and has thus held a variety of other jobs such as: waitress, cook, logistics dispatcher, retail manager, sign shop manager, event planner, administrative assistant, and a college housing coordinator .
This immense real world experience adds a cherry on top to her teaching career.
She knows how to prepare kids to live in the real world and fosters that within her classroom.
She says her favorite age group to work with are the high school students.
When she began teaching Spanish, it was her favorite class to teach. As she became more experienced and had several good Spanish II classes, she discovered she likes teaching all of it (both Spanish I and Spanish II).
She is the Spanish Club sponsor for the high school. She fosters this through various activities. For the high schoolers, she hosts a Day of the Dead trivia, and for the Elementary, they will be doing a coloring contest in the coming days.
Her favorite aspect of teaching is the “aha” moments that kids have, when the lightbulb turns on and she can see the student understands what she is trying to teach.
She also enjoys talking to the students and listening to them describe what they want to do in the future.
She believes learning Spanish in her class is just part of it, it’s also about developing real-world skills to prepare them for their future.
Teaching Spanish has many memorable moments, the most memorable of which are when students make mistakes and don’t say what they actually want to say.
One such instance was when a student wanted to say turkey sandwich and said dust sandwich instead.
You can tell she fosters a great environment for learning as the students correct each other sometimes during class. Mistakes are just a part of learning a new language and she knows how to make it fun.
What makes it all worth it for her is when her students use Spanish in their job or contact her of old memories made on their trips to foreign countries.
One of her former students contacted her and is in Ecuador with a service learning group utilizing his Spanish skills. Another group of students contacted her reminding her of their time in Barcelona dancing to “La Bomba.”
Some of her former students simply tell her they miss being in her class.
You can tell she is a beloved and well-deserving recipient of this award for many reasons. But this last reason is the most convincing. One of her former students got in a really bad car accident, and he actually ended up in a coma. But when he did end up speaking, all he spoke was in Spanish. That alone speaks for itself on how much of an impact Jill has on her students.
