She’s the author of several books for different Spanish levels based upon the National Spanish Standards developed by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) and the most frequently used grammatical structures in the Spanish Language. Zuchovicki has been teaching Spanish since 2001 to elementary and middle school students. Laura “la maestra” Zuchovicki was born in Mexico City and hold a bachelor’s degree in communications from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico. Conversa is owned by three local Orange County women, who are originally from Mexico and had not met until a common desire for teaching languages brought them together. What is the owner’s background/education?Ī. Our teachers receive all the materials they need for their classes, lesson plans and on-going support directly from the three partners. We pay the necessary fees for our teachers to attend conferences, seminars and meetings that present the latest findings in Comprehensible Input Methodologies. Unlike other programs similar to CONVERSA, we train our teachers how to use our materials and how to be successful in the classroom. We are also proud of the support we give our teachers. This allows us to better service our clients since we have the ability to make adjustments and changes wherever necessary be it in the books, class schedules or teacher training classes. All three partners are closely involved with the schools, principals, after-school program coordinators, students and parents to meet all their respective needs. The three partners are responsible for the day-to-day operations besides defining long term goals, objectives and strategies. In addition, CONVERSA is not a franchise. Our goal is to make students comfortable with the language and culture, being able to speak Spanish and “be cool.” The teacher’s guides have a wide variety of activities that help to create conversations emulating real situations with a touch of humor and culture. The student’s workbooks have stories developed by children for children they are not only entertaining but they are fun. This is the main reason why we have translations in our materials. We understand the meaning of total comprehensible input very well it’s the only way to make language acquisition natural. Our students are introduced to new cultures while widening professional and personal opportunities. We teach Spanish for long term acquisition through an efficient, structured and engaging program where students can speak the language and communicate effectively. What makes you different from other businesses?Ī. When we started CONVERSA, the few organizations that taught languages to young students lacked a well developed curriculum, offered their teachers practically no training to begin teaching and did not service their clients efficiently. We saw the opportunity to teach Spanish to children by creating a business that offered professionalism, quality and a long term commitment to our different stakeholders. When we founded CONVERSA we could only think about one concept: “Learning a foreign language has to be natural, fun and cool.” Having this concept in mind, in addition to our experience of having had to learn English “the hard way,” we started our program. Through our online store, we also sell our curriculum for middle school Spanish, including student workbooks and teacher manuals.Ī. We provide in-curriculum and after school Spanish classes to students from Kindergarten to eighth grade in private and public schools throughout Orange County.
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