The Virgin Islands Modern Foreign Language Association (VIMFLA) St. Thomas-St. John Chapterand the St. Thomas-St. John District Foreign Language Program have announced the selection of Nancy Laguna Luque, a Spanish teacher at the Charlotte Amalie High School, as the fourth recipient of the Foreign Language Teacher of the Year (FLTOY)Award. This award recognizes best practices and excellence in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Laguna was nominated and unanimously approved by VIMFLA board members and district judges. The official presentation of the award will be made at a dinner ceremony on Saturday, May 29.
Luque, a native of Colombia, has been teaching for more than 18 years and has been teaching Spanish in the Virgin Islands since 2005. As a V.I. Board of Education Certified Spanish Secondary Educator, her many professional accomplishments include coaching the Charlotte Amalie High School’s Quiz Bowl Team, which resulted in the winning of the championship title for two consecutive years in 2008 and 2009. Actively involved in all district-sponsored events, such as the Foreign Language Cultural Showcase, her students have created winning copies of the masters and created theme posters for the event. Luque helps to organize her schools’ programs in observance of National Foreign Languages Month and serves also as the sponsor of the Luis Lloréns Torres Chapter of the Spanish Honor Society.
Believing that “not having a second language limits the world of a person,” she says she cannot imagine her life without the possibility of communicating in other languages in addition to the one she learnt from her parents. Her first language is Spanish and her second languages are French and English.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Languages and Literature with majors in Spanish and French pedagogy and a minor in education from the National Pedagogical University of Columbia. She holds a Master of Arts in French with a minor in didactics from the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Instituto Superior de Francés in Bogotá, Columbia, and a Master’s of Arts Degree in Spanish Language and Literature from Louisiana State University.
As VIMFLA’s Foreign Language Teacher of the Year, she will represent the territory at the regional level at the Southern Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (SCOLT’s) competition in April 2011. If successful at the regional level, Laguna will compete in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL’s) National Teacher of the Yearcompetition in November of 2011.
For more information on theTeacher of the Year Program, contact Myrna V. van Beverhoudt, district foreign languages coordinator and VIMFLA’s vice president/resident agent, at mvanbeverhoudt@sttj.k12.vi myrnavanbvi@yahoo.com or at 775-2250 ext. 8540.
