Fall River Public Schools providing free Spanish classes to staff members, here’s why

FALL RIVER — Superintendent Dr. Tracy Curley has announced that Fall River Public Schools is providing free Spanish classes to staff to help them to strengthen bonds with Spanish-speaking students and parents.

The free Spanish for Educators classes are held once a week at Kuss Middle School and Silvia Elementary School. The classes, which started on April 7 and will be ongoing through June 9, are taught on Mondays by two Fall River Public Schools teachers, Javier Candelas and David Lopez Guijarro.

The classes are designed to teach the essentials of Spanish, with a focus on practical communication, from simple greetings to more complex phrases. The goal is to empower educators to interact more effectively with Spanish-speaking students and their families.

“This program allows educators to step into the shoes of a language learner and experience the joys and challenges of learning an additional language,” said MLL Director Lisa Zagarella. “As educators build an understanding of Spanish, they can connect with their students by communicating with them and their parents in Spanish. Additionally, they can continue building their language skills by allowing the students to teach them more about the language with which they are most familiar.”

Zagarella said that as teachers learn more about the similarities and differences between English and Spanish, it can help them to more effectively teach students by calling explicit attention to these similarities and differences.

“Most importantly, language can be a powerful form of connection,” Zagarella said. “The languages that we use to communicate are deeply connected to our cultural identities. When we are able to share a language with another person, it allows us to strengthen our bond with them. These connections are a deep part of what allows us to feel safe as learners and to take risks. It’s when adults and children take these risks that they really learn new things.”

The two teachers of Spanish for Educators classes, Javier Candelas and David Lopez Guijarro, work in the Dual Language Nueva Vista Program. Both of them were born in Spain and teach at the Viveiros Elementary School.

“Their first-hand expertise in bilingual education makes them the perfect teachers for these classes,” Zagarella said. “A big thank you for this initiative goes to our instructors, Javier Candelas and David Lopez Guijarro, who are developing all of the content for the course,” Zagarella said.

While Spanish for Educators program was developed by these two teachers pulling double-duty, the program was first pitched by Assistant Superintendent Brian Raposo, empowering the district’s Dual Language team to bring the program to life.

“By offering free Spanish language instruction to our public educators, we are advancing equity and strengthening communication across our diverse school communities, improving partnerships with students and families,” said Assistant Superintendent Raposo. “We’re building educator capacity and leveraging our bilingual staff to teach the course, highlighting the strengths of our learning community.”