¡Hola! I’m Frances a Latina educator and author of Coco la cotorra puertorriquena my first children’s book.
My passion for education and my teaching philosophy stems from my personal experience. I’m a native Spanish speaker who has raised her son to be bilingual in a completely monolingual English environment. I started teaching him Spanish when he was four years old, and he is now a bilingual 13-year-old. You can read our story here.
I have a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Universidad del Este in Puerto Rico, a certification in Human Resources from the Escuela Avanzada de Recursos Humanos in Puerto Rico, and a master’s degree in Spanish education from the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. I’m also the founder and writer of the multicultural, bilingual parenting website, Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes and Discovering Español (Discovering Spanish), a business dedicated to teaching Spanish online. I currently teach/tutor 1:1 Spanish sessions, and I teach group Spanish lessons for younger kids on Outschool.
I also offer translation and interpreting services in Spanish.
“I help foster pride in the Hispanic heritage by connecting culture to language through education, instruction, and networking.“
Heritage. Culture. Language.
I’m committed to educating our community about the Hispanic and Latino culture, and I’m very fortunate that I can do it. For the past few years (except last year due to the pandemic), I’ve hosted and volunteered for an annual Hispanic Heritage Day in my local hometown library. You can see the Facebook live video of one of the events here. Additionally, I have tons of resources here to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. In the picture above, I volunteered at my son’s preschool Spanish storytime.
Are you interested in hearing what other parents and community members have to say? Click here.
Why learn Spanish?
Spanish is the second largest spoken language in the world. Learning Spanish will allow you to communicate with 460 million native speakers.
You can learn Spanish at any age!
Have you ever wished to learn Spanish? Have you ever tried to teach your child Spanish with no luck? Do you feel it’s too late for you or your child?
Although there is a lot of debate concerning the critical period hypothesis stating that the first few years of life constitute the time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful.” – Source However, Rita Rosenback author of the book Bringing up a Bilingual Child writes, “(there is) no hard and fast age before which a child has to start learning a language to be able to speak it well.” Furthermore, new research indicates that language acquisition is possible in adults, too. You see, you can learn Spanish at any age!
My Goal
My goal is to help you reach your (or your child’s) Spanish language goal. Whether it is to understand Spanish, hold conversations, read in Spanish, or brush up on a dormant Spanish language, I can help you. I work with monolinguals who want to learn Spanish, heritage speakers, and bilingual or dual-language learners who need to hone their Spanish language skills. My objective is to motivate each student to develop a passion for language learning and an appreciation for the Spanish language and its cultures.