Erin Garcia is a high school Spanish teacher at Monacan High School in Richmond, Virginia. She is passionate about the Spanish language and culture, and about teaching in general. She taught abroad in Nicaragua from 2009-2011 and for two different middle schools in Richmond. This is her third year of teaching completely with CI strategies, and she has seen amazing results. She has presented at a state-wide conference and is a leader and mentor in her district on CI strategies, particularly storylistening. She wants to see everyone in her district using CI and having as much success as she has had. In her free time, she enjoys running, biking and swimming, DIY home projects as well as cooking and eating healthy.
Brett Chonko is a high school Spanish teacher at Clover Hill High School in the greater Richmond, Virginia area. He has been teaching Spanish for six years and turned to Comprehensible Input during the spring of 2016 after reading Stephen Krashen’s Principles and Practices in Second Language Acquisition. He is motivated to be the best teacher he can possibly be and strives to make his classes more engaging every day. He believes that student interest and loads of input is the key to long term language acquisition. Brett is deeply indebted to the work of many great teachers including, but not limited to, Tina Hargaden, Mike Peto, Grant Boulanger, Ben Slavic, Carol Gaab, Bryce Hedstrom, and, of course, Erin García. When not obsessing over CI, Brett likes travelling abroad, cooking, listening to Radio Ambulante, reading, and hanging out with his wife and cat.
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