Spanish teacher Brittany Hooper took her first Spanish class in high school and dove deeper into the subject in college. “I just kind of fell in love with everything about [Spanish]: the language, the culture, the history,” said Ms. Hooper.
Despite her late start, Ms. Hooper is an accomplished Spanish-speaker and teacher, and the newest addition to Hackley’s Modern Languages Department.
With Dr. Sosa-Velasco’s departure from the Modern Languages Department, Ms. Hooper recently took on a new role as an Upper School Spanish teacher. She took on most of Dr. Sosa-Velasco’s classes, including Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish and Post-AP Level II Spanish. Next year, she will work as both a Middle and Upper School Spanish teacher.
Ms. Hooper heard about Hackley a few years ago when she was working at the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut as a Middle and Upper School Spanish teacher and the World Language Department Coordinator. She loved working there, but it was far from where she lived.
The main factor that drew Ms. Hooper to Hackley was the community. “I just loved the aspect of the community and looking at how every student is viewed as an individual,” said Ms. Hooper.
She liked how every student is celebrated both inside and outside of the classroom, how students have the opportunity to participate in many different extracurriculars, that there is a lot of room to grow both as a student and a teacher, and that the language department teaches many different languages.
“Everybody is so nice. People just go out of their way to check up on me and see how I’m doing, students and teachers alike,” said Ms. Hooper, adding, “It’s been really cool to see just how kind and welcoming everybody has been.”
Ms. Hooper looks forward to getting to know Hackley students of all divisions. “I’m just really excited to be able to teach other Spanish levels. I was hired as both a Middle and Upper School teacher, so I think it would be really cool to check out the Middle School as well, see what’s going on in there,” said Ms. Hooper. She also hopes to chaperone one of Hackley’s trips, hpefully adding to the list of 35 countries that she has visited in her life, but has never had the opportunity to do that at any other school.
Ms. Hooper attended Ramapo College, where she studied Spanish and International Studies with a minor in Latin American Studies. She studied abroad several times, including twice in Spain and once in Costa Rica. While studying abroad, she took several opportunities to teach English in classrooms, learning how to be a teacher. After graduating, she went to Chile to teach English for a few months. She received her master’s in Spanish Linguistics from Middlebury College, spending an academic year in Madrid and two summers in Vermont.
“I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish, so the chances I got to learn it were when I was studying abroad in other countries, and that made me love it and transition to being a teacher of the language,” said Ms. Hooper.
All of Ms. Hooper’s professors in college and graduate school were from Spanish-speaking countries. While this was a great opportunity for her to learn from their experiences and hear how they spoke, she said that she was not able to see herself up there with her professors.
“I’ve noticed over my career as a teacher that I’ve been able to inspire the students, and they’re able to see, ‘oh well, if she’s able to learn Spanish at a later time, so can I,’” said Ms. Hooper.