Are you interested in becoming fluent in a language, perhaps Spanish? Well luckily for you, Daphne has an amazing Spanish teacher, Mrs. Bazel. She teaches Spanish I, II, regular, and IB. She has been working at Daphne for about 15 years and attended the University of Tennessee, class of 2000 in Chattanooga where she majored in education.

On her adventure to become fluent in Spanish, she definitely ran into some obstacles and challenges, but she was able to make her way through and is now in love with teaching Spanish here at Daphne!

During college, Mrs. Bazel studied abroad and went to Mexico where she stayed with a family in Cuernavaca, “It was awesome… It was beautiful and I had a great experience!”, she explained with a smile.

Back in high school, a teacher had sparked interest in her about Spanish yet, she was uncertain about what she wanted to do while in college. However, she did know she wanted to continue with Spanish and soon decided to major in education with a focus in Spanish, which led her to study abroad.

Teaching Spanish to her students is one of her favorite things, “I think what’s most exciting to me is when you’re teaching something and you have a kid who is struggling to get it and all of a sudden you see that light bulb go off and they finally understand it!” She describes excitingly, “It’s such a breakthrough moment that that’s why I love teaching.”, she says with a small grin.

She continues to talk more about her students, explaining how every day is different and how she’s always learning from them.

Learning a second language is not easy, it takes a lot of time to understand it and involving it into your day to day life. “It’s challenging, fun and exciting because of all the different places I can travel and use it!” Mrs. Bazel explains. While she was learning Spanish there were always obstacles, such as being able to use it 24/7, because it can depend on who you’re talking to and if you are in a different country.

She gives us some advice, “The easiest way to learn a language is to clearly be immersed in it. To travel somewhere where you are forced to use it, where you have to be around it, where you’re listening to it, you’re reading it, you’re speaking it, because all of the language factors come into play… the more you are immersed in that, the easier it is to pick up.”

She explains, “If you don’t have the opportunity to travel, a really good thing is to listen to TV stations in Spanish with English subtitles so that way you’re hearing it, but you’re also able to read and keep up.”