ABC Language Exchange teachers are among the highest quality professionals to be found. We only employ language teachers with the experience and pedagogical training to provide the most effective language program possible. ABC teachers focus on real results. Our goal is to have the students use the target language in class the whole time so they are best prepared to use the language in real-life situations. We have found this dynamic approach to language learning, coupled with our solid curricula, leads to proficiency and eventual fluency in a foreign language.

Don’t be surprised in Michelena’s class if she walks over to put a gold star in your notebook when you answer correctly, or if she asks the class to stand up and do jumping jacks when people seem sleepy, or if she suddenly has the class playing a children’s game in Spanish. “Students have been at work all day and they are sometimes tired or distracted. That is when I come up with something entertaining to bring everyone back into the fold and to recapture their attention,” Michelena explains.

Michelena’s creative teaching methods make her a favorite among students. Class goes beyond the textbook by incorporating conversation, games and role-playing. Michelena puts the students’ interest and attention foremost, at times using techniques she picked up in her many years of teaching children. “Adults like to be engaged, just like children; often the same games can be even more fun for the adults. They get a kick out of it.”

She also keeps a close eye on the students’ progress. “Teaching adults is amazing. It’s nice to see a student progress. I see a person making connections and think ‘wow, I did that’. That’s the most rewarding part.” Michelena knows the teaching profession well as she started her career at the young age of 14. She tutored illiterate people in her community in Jalisco, Mexico. Even as a new teacher Michelena had a few tricks up her sleeve. Not always finding it easy to convince people of the importance of learning to read and write in Spanish, she sometimes told people “When you go to Heaven, God will ask you to sign your name.” That seemed to convince people and over the next couple of years she taught many people from her neighborhood. “When I go back people still stop me in the street to thank me.”

Michelena continued her teaching career throughout college as a tutor and then taught English in Japan, where she lived for three years. “I think teaching was my calling. It feels natural to me and I love it. It doesn’t feel like work,” she says. After coming back to the U.S., Michelena explored other careers, putting her teaching on hold. “My mother told me I should be a teacher and maybe because she said that I felt the need explore other professions. But, of course, as always, mothers are right in the end. She never said ‘I told you so’ though.” Michelena returned to teaching as a Spanish teacher for kids. Several years later she began teaching adults as well. “I always wanted a job that would make me and other people happy, and I have found it.”