10th Grade Spanish
Aleida Rivera-Gorgol is the Spanish teacher for the entire 10th grade; each 10th grade teaching team takes a semester of Spanish, so she teaches one team for the first semester and the other team during the second semester. I had Aleida's class during the first semester of 10th grade, and although I only received half a year of Spanish instruction, I feel like I really learned a lot. I think if I had just focused on memorizing words and phrases I would forget most of my Spanish instruction by the time I took 11th grade Spanish, but Aleida focused much more on teaching Spanish grammar and conjugations, which I think will stick with me for much longer than various memorized words would have. I admit that I was intensely nervous about Spanish class before starting the school year because I had tried to make an extracurricular class in elementary school and done poorly; however, Aleida made the class enjoyable even as it challenged me, and I was astonished to realize partway through the semester that I was actually learning things, and starting to catch on to how the Spanish language is works. Because it was something really new and something that I didn't already understand, even a little bit, I had to actively work at learning in this class. Thus, by the time first semester ended, 10th grade Spanish had become one of my favorite Sophomore classes.