LANGLEY — She’ll bike and Skype for her love of teaching Spanish.
An irrepressible thirst for adventure and learning made Langley resident and Spanish teacher Sonja Bricker want to bring the world to her students.
Bricker teaches Spanish to second-, third- and fourth-year high school students at Meadowdale High School in Edmonds. In February, she will take a leave of absence from the classroom to launch a new program she calls “Spain with Sonja.”
“I love teaching and it’s great, but I don’t feel that my love of adventure and spontaneity, and all the experiences that have changed my life because of Spanish, are really coming out in the classroom,” Bricker said.
“I feel like it’s really just a class and even though I’m constantly trying to make it fun and interesting, it’s really contrived.”
Bricker decided it was time to shake things up, so she proposed a project to her employer that would allow her a 37-day absence from her teaching job and be back in the classroom in April.
Having been a world traveler as a teen and young adult, Bricker discovered her love of language while traveling, often by bicycle, to 41 countries, 12 of which are Spanish-speaking.
“I spent about 12 years traveling around the world in the winters. When you speak Spanish you can go to 21 countries and you can speak with the people,” Bricker said.
From Feb. 6 to April 10, Bricker will cycle through Andalusia in the southern area of Spain and shoot videos of local teenagers, write a bilingual blog and conduct weekly Skype conversations between teens she meets in Spain and her students in Washington.
“I’ll focus on teenagers and show my students what it looks like living in Spain — living with their parents, what they wear, what they eat, dating, what the night life is like,” Bricker said.
“I feel like if they can relate to Spanish teenagers, maybe they’ll be truly interested and want to pursue something more; go further in Spanish,” she added.
Bricker has already created a rapport with her students after being firmly ensconced at Meadowdale High School for five years.
“I’ve already developed a relationship with them and I think they will care about following me; they care about me enough to want to participate,” Bricker said.
Bricker already has a Spanish-speaking website, which she created for her classes and which students can refer to for short Spanish videos, a dictionary and a link to YouTube streams for all things Spanish-speaking.
Recently, for this new travel project, she added the blog, SpainwithSonja, with an introductory video of herself explaining the program to anyone who might like to follow her travels.
“Every Friday I’ll Skype for the first 15 minutes of their class. I’m hoping to have guest speakers who will talk to my kids back in the classroom so they have a chance to practice speaking with a native Spanish teenager in real time,” Bricker said.
She hopes to encompass all forms of learning Spanish, including the speaking, the reading and the writing, she added.
“I know this technology doesn’t seem new to us now, but it’s really still kind of exciting, isn’t it? To be able to see a person that far away while talking to them,” she said.
Although Bricker is using her sabbatical to enhance the experience for her students, she will not be paid during her absence and is trying to raise funds for her trip. To donate, visit the blog page at spainwithsonja.blogspot.com or send a donation in the mail to Sonja Bricker, PO Box 102, Greenbank, WA 98253.
