She may be half a world away from her home in Argentina, but Pamela Espíndola is at Coconino Community College doing what she loves:
She’s teaching students Spanish.
“My job here is to work as a cultural ambassador and to help with the courses to have students learn a foreign language,” she said.
Espíndola is a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant for Spanish courses taught at CCC, and she is the fourth one that the college has been graced to receive said Katie Schwartz, Spanish faculty at the college who supervises the FLTAs.
“This is a big deal for CCC because we can’t pay to help with living expenses,” Schwartz said, adding that the organization, International Institute of Education, helped create a grant with the U.S. Department of Education to make a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant for CCC a reality. In fact, the first FLTA at CCC shared having such a positive experience at the college that all the subsequent FLTAs have been possible. CCC’s FLTAs have come from Argentina, Columbia and Mexico so far.