PASCACK VALLEY REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT—¡Felicitaciones! The Pascack Valley Regional High School District announced with pride that Elena Spathis, Pascack Valley High School world language teacher, has been selected as the Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey 2021 State Teacher of the Year.
Each year, FLENJ identifies an exemplary world language teacher who personifies and promotes the best in the profession. FLENJ is a non-profit, foreign language organization that represents all world language educators at all levels in New Jersey.
Its Teacher of the year is honored at the Annual Conference in the spring and competes on the regional level the following winter at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL). That winner then competes to become the ACTFL Teacher of the Year at the national level.
Spathis told Proficiency Talks, a blog on language learning and teaching, that she is certified to teach English as a Second Language, that she speaks Greek fluently, and is Greek heritage.
“I became a language teacher because of my deep interest in the Spanish language and the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. I grew up in a traditional Greek family that frequently traveled to Greece so I was always fascinated by other languages, cultures, and countries. I have always been an avid traveler. I love seeing and experiencing different parts of the world,” she told the blog.
She said she “picked up Spanish fairly quickly in high school. My prior knowledge and proficiency in Greek definitely worked in my favor, as I feel that my mind had always been trained to recognize patterns between languages.”
(For more, see the excellent Q&A at https://blog.waysidepublishing.com/wayside-featured-teacher.)
PV graduate Isabella Tjan said “An essential aspect of Srta. Spathis’s instruction was the use of materials that connected the classroom to the real world. I enjoyed this immensely; in an honors Spanish class, one does not normally expect to learn about artists such as Picasso or Dalí, consider immigration policy through the lens of a family from Nicaragua or Honduras, or explore climate change throughout Chile and Spain.”
Tjan said, “However, this is exactly the realm of what we covered in Honors Spanish IV. It was enlightening. Not only did it make me care about the subject, but the global perspectives that I gained through this class that I still carry with me have permanently shaped my way of thinking.”
According to Tjan, the goal of Spathis’s instruction “is not limited to memorization of vocabulary and conjugation forms; rather, she aims to develop fluidity with the language that the student is then able to apply to current topics through a global lens.”
Tjan said, “Therefore, I have not only been educated in the Spanish language, I also have been educated about the Spanish-speaking world, and there is no other way to have gotten that other than through this incredible teaching style.”
According to District Supervisor of World Languages Noemi Rodriguez, Spathis consistently pushes her own growth as a world language educator.
“This has led her to share her own ideas through a variety of professional development workshops, published articles and webinars. She has presented at the local, state and national levels year after year,” said Rodriguez.
She added, “In my opinion, Ms. Spathis is a truly ‘connected’ educator, sharing her insight on different social media platforms and maintaining her own blog with a tremendous wealth of resources and strategies for immediate application.”
With the change to hybrid instruction, said Rodriguez, Spathis continues to strive to deliver engaging lessons with comprehensible input at the heart of each class meeting. “She has found unique, engaging ways to maintain a positive [virtual] classroom environment with all of her students and classes.”
Taking the top honor in 2020 was Ashley Warren of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District.