December 09, 2016

Student teaching opportunities both in Pennsylvania and abroad helped Kristen Leary ’16 secure a teaching position immediately after graduation.

The Spanish and education double major received an internship to teach English in Sevilla, Spain, at Centro Norteamericano in the summer of 2014.

“My experiences from my Spanish courses at Susquehanna helped me to feel confident in my ability to communicate and express myself using certain grammatical and colloquial expressions,” Leary says.

“As for the teaching part, a lot of what I learned in my education classes at Susquehanna helped me to work on my classroom management as well as my lesson planning. So I used this experience to help me learn to become a more effective language teacher,” she adds.

In addition, during the spring of her senior year, Leary taught Spanish 1, 2 and 3 at Shikellamy High School in nearby Sunbury, Pa.

“I learned that my favorite level to teach is Spanish 1 because I love hearing students use Spanish for the first time!” she says.

Successfully completing that second student teaching experience led to a full-time position in the same district.

“I am excited to see how the language program at the school evolves over the next few years, and I am very happy that I am a part of it,” Leary says.