My name is Astrid Leese. I am going to be your student's Spanish teacher this year. I am excited to start my 16th year of teaching my native language; this year being my fifth at Saline Area Schools. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico where I studied my BA in Secondary Education with Spanish major at University of Puerto Rico at the Rio Piedras campus. I had the opportunity to teach Spanish there for four years before moving to the mainland.
In 2008, I moved to Michigan to studied a MA in Applied Spanish Linguistics at Michigan State University (MSU), where I also taught Spanish 101, Spanish 102, Spanish 201, and Spanish 250 to college students. During my years at MSU, my research focus was how language changes when it is in contact with another language. I studied a sample of a Mexican population living in Lansing, MI. After I completed my MA at MSU, I moved to Pennsylvania where I studied my second MA degree in Spanish at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU). At Penn State, my research focus was child language acquisition. I also taught Spanish 2, Spanish 3, and Spanish 215 (Spanish Linguistics) at PSU for three years.
I love traveling and learning about other cultures. This passion lead me to study abroad in Nicaragua during my first MA to participate in a Summer Seminar Abroad for Spanish Teachers organized by Ohio State University. My experiences as a graduate student and college instructor have given me the opportunity to expand my exposure to different cultures from various perspectives.
In addition to learning about Spanish language and culture, I love spending time with my family. My awesome husband was born and raised in Michigan. We have three kids. Grace is 5 year old, Kate is 4 year old, and Sebastian is 2 year old. They are exposed to Spanish and English on the daily basis. While I fluently speak Spanish, my husband does not. We love seeing them interchange their dialogue, using both English and Spanish, without realizing they are using two different languages. We are delighted to see our kids interacting with each other in our bilingual home. I find it amazing I get to actually experience what I studied as my family grows (child language acquisition) and when we interact with each other (how language changes) as we speak. This also gives me another opportunity to incorporate what I've learned from my own personal life into lesson plans, activities and goals for my students.