My Bilingual Heart is a resource run by me, Anne Barton-Veenkant, to teach you Spanish so you can create connections with your students and families and speak Spanish out in the world, whether that is your local community or your dream summer destination.  

There are a lot of options out there for language learning, but it is almost impossible to know what will work for you. That is why I started My Bilingual Heart: so that you can pursue your Spanish goals with someone who has walked your path and understands the demands of your job. But I’ve only gotten started. Let me share a little more … 

Over the last 10 years I have been:

– A bilingual teacher, interventionist, reading specialist, and curriculum-writer

– An Spanish immersion teacher

– A Dean of Students

– An Assistant Principal

– And now I am my district’s ELL Coordinator and Teacher

But I have also been:

– A Project Director for a non-profit in Nicaragua

– A non-profit staff member in Costa Rica and Mexico

– a wide-eyed hungry-to-experience-the-world volunteer in Honduras

I am a backyard gardener, career educator, and podcast junkie in my early thirties who learned Spanish, first because I had to, then because I loved it, and then kept learning because it became a part of who I am and my place in the world.

Like you, teaching pushed me out of my comfort zone in many ways, and one of them was my language … 

I graduated from college with a plan to work in Latin American community development. But before I could figure out exactly what that meant, I was persuaded (with enthusiasm), to make a 2-year commitment to teaching in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (If you’re guessing Teach for America right now, you’d be correct.) There I was, living 5 miles north of the border and teaching just a few miles north of that. Somehow, my principal deemed me capable of teaching four out of five subjects in Spanish to native Spanish-speakers. (Silent freak-out + Naive enthusiasm = Diving into foolish endeavors)

I went into the school year with high hopes and was hit with the challenges of first year teaching, which YOU know very well. 😉 But on top of that, my Spanish, which was advanced-proficient at the time, was put to a new kind of test. I now had to speak Spanish quickly and fluently enough to not lose my first graders’ attention, and help them learn and grow in their native language!

Reality Check:

Preparing for Day 1 revealed a whole set of vocabulary I had never had to use before. Things like “subtraction,” “segmenting,” “Reading” (like, the subject, not the verb), and “field trip.” *Hint: Google translate is not great for these things. 

My first Parent Teacher Conferences revealed even more missing words: “report card,” “decoding,” “mastery,” and a whole host of others.

These were simply not words I was taught in any Spanish class in high school OR in college, because most people just don’t need to know them … just as I hadn’t had to know them in any setting before.

Then there was the added challenge that I had to model exemplar language for my babies!

So, in other words, my already “fluent” Spanish had to become simultaneously faster, grammatically flawless, and more specialized. Just remembering it makes my heart beat faster…

This could have been enough to make me quit and go into something easier … like ANYTHING OTHER THAN TEACHING. Or at least something where I could speak English all day.

But thanks to a solid foundation in Spanish, patient help from others, and my deep commitment and optimism, it did not make me quit. 

Instead, I persisted until eventually, I regularly heard things like, “Your Spanish sounds perfect!” (from a Spanish teacher) and “Are you Mexican?” (from a native Spanish-speaker) until now, I can’t imagine an English-only life.

Now I want to give to YOU:

– a solid foundation in Spanish, just as I was lucky enough to get from my first teachers

– patient guidance and clear instruction to help you progress as far and high as you want to go

– school-based vocabulary that allows you to communicate in your day-to-day

The advice I received from two business coaches at the time I started teaching Spanish outside my regular teaching job was to serve wealthy customers who would pay top dollar for my instruction: businesspeople traveling to Latin America, or perhaps married couples going on a honeymoon. But the thing is, that isn’t who I wanted to serve.

I want to do this for YOU for a few reasons. And let me tell you some of them, because you don’t hear them enough:

1) You are among the toughest people on the planet. Anyone who has taught knows this is true.

2) You will use this skill for immeasurable good. The impact on families, students, and the people you and they will touch in the future … I can’t even begin to describe it.

3) As someone who is used to always giving and serving, it is massively important for you to do something for yourself. I hope that like my other Spanish students, pursuing Spanish gives you personal satisfaction for its own sake.

4) I also know that learning a language takes commitment… and this I know you have, because you’re an educator … and an educator who chose to read this website.

It wasn’t until I moved to St. Louis that I truly recognized the value of my Spanish. 

Though my Texas colleagues asked me why in the world I was moving to the midwest where I would “not be able to use my Spanish,” it turned out that I could use it more than ever, because while the Spanish-speaking population is much smaller than in Texas, there is almost no one bilingual who can help and serve them. So I have become the go-to point of contact for our families for more than just school issues …

But the real light bulb turned on when my colleagues began asking me if I would teach them Spanish. They wanted to connect with families, too. They were sick of feeling cut off from them. They wanted to tell them, “I love your child!” They wanted to be able to invite them personally to field trips! And in many cases, learning Spanish was an old dream which they hadn’t nurtured in years, if at all. 

So when I started My Bilingual Heart in 2018, my goal was to spread the gifts that come with Spanish:

– self-confidence

– a sense of adventure and accomplishment

– the new ability to embrace bilingual students and their parents

– the opportunity to model lifelong learning;

– oh my gosh, and so so much more. 

At first, I was worried, because in today’s technological world, there is no shortage of language-learning services. But what has become harder is the choosing. It is impossible to tell what you’re getting before you get it. It is difficult to know how much you will use it, or whether it is going to be effective for you. There is a definite fear of spending a large quantity of money only to discover it isn’t a good match. And as I discovered when I began teaching, Spanish programs meant for the general population do not give teachers the language they need to start speaking with families tomorrow. 

They also don’t give people the love, encouragement, and concrete opportunties they need to step out into the world and start USING their Spanish with others … which is where so many people get stuck. And if you don’t speak it with others, then what is the point, right?

This is why My Bilingual Heart was born. I want you to benefit from my years of experience, lessons learned, and to know that you have someone walking alongside you.

It is why I create opportunities for you to practice in the real world and give you recommendations for how else to do that wherever you live.

It is also the reason I regularly take questions from all my students and post the answers to my blog and my membership group.

I still teach and coordinate ELL programming full time. I am also at a point in my life when I want to be able to create more opportunities for my own family without giving up the values that led me to education in the first place. 

I love teaching teachers Spanish because it is a way to pay it forward and support the life I envision at the same time. I thank you for entrusting me with your aspirations. No matter what you do or don’t do on my website, simply by being here and being interested you are supporting this mission and movement, and for that I am truly grateful.

But another reason I thAnk you is because being here means you are going the extra mile for your students (as always) …

and you are also doing something for yourself, which is enormously important, and I encourage you to do more of it. 😉

If you hang around, you will also learn some of the things I do for myself … 

And if you’re worried you’ve “missed the boat” … you haven’t.

I have had a student who had never taken a single Spanish class before who has gone on to order her favorite salsa verde in Spanish, despite ordering in English every week for years.

I have had another student who took Spanish in college, but never got the speaking practice she wanted, and took my class after years without Spanish, who ended up connecting with her Spanish-speaking families at parent teacher conferences.

Yet another was very proficient at one time, even dreaming in Spanish while living in Guatemala, but who regressed and lost confidence after years without practice. She has gone to communicate primarily independently about complex school-related issues. Even when she checks her Spanish e-mails and texts with me now, she rarely needs correction!

No matter how little background you have or how long you’ve been away from Spanish, I am committed to you!

You are the reason I do this. Everything I offer is to serve you. I want to hear from you about your successes, what you need, and what your goals are. 

Thank you for being here. I’d love for you to join this movement and community of educators who are becoming bilingual for their students, for their families, and their pure enjoyment of the world.