{"id":1593,"date":"2018-11-17T17:45:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T17:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2018-11-17T17:45:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T17:45:15","slug":"the-spanish-department-welcomes-ms-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2018\/11\/17\/the-spanish-department-welcomes-ms-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spanish Department Welcomes Ms. Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Vicky Gu ’20<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This year, Ms. Sara Hall joins the Middle School as a new teacher in the Spanish Department. She will teach Spanish levels 1A and 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before coming to Pingry, Ms. Hall taught Spanish for 9 years in Illinois and Connecticut, mostly in urban public schools. She has also taught at various charter and magnet schools. Most recently, she taught Spanish at Southern Connecticut State University for two years. Ms. Hall has taught to a wide range of age groups, from kindergarten to college students. Except for one year in which she taught English Language Arts, Ms. Hall has always taught Spanish throughout her career.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conversations with Assistant Headmaster Delvin Dinkins and World Languages Department Chair Steve Benoit first sparked Ms. Hall\u2019s interest in working at Pingry. She found through speaking with them that Pingry matched her educational philosophy in important aspects that her last school didn\u2019t share, such as Pingry\u2019s goal to develop the \u201cwhole child\u201d instead of just their academic side. She appreciates that Pingry recognizes this and teaches both character and social development to its students in addition to its curriculum.<\/span><\/p>\n

The emphasis on diversity at Pingry further resonated with Ms. Hall. \u201cI absolutely love the focus on diversity and inclusion,\u201d she said. As someone in an interracial relationship with multiracial children, \u201cit means everything to me.\u201d Her favorite part of the rigorous interview process was talking to Dr. Artis and the Diversity and Inclusion Department, because they know \u201cthere are unconscious biases that we need to overcome. Lots of adults don\u2019t know that they have those biases or are uncomfortable with addressing them.\u201d She agrees that the school needs to make sure that everyone has these important conversations.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a teaching assistant for sophomores in an English class in her senior year of high school, Ms. Hall first found her love for teaching and sparking interest in students. \u201cIt felt so natural – I knew at that moment it was for me. . . . There\u2019s this lightbulb. Sometimes the light\u2019s already been lit, and sometimes the light ignites later on. But being part of igniting that light is the reason,\u201d Ms. Hall said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Though she only started learning Spanish during her sophomore year of high school, Ms. Hall hopes to convey to her students that anyone can become good at Spanish. \u201cMy father\u2019s from Indonesia but never taught me his language,\u201d she said. Ms. Hall has one Mexican cousin, but she does not speak Spanish natively. She hopes to show that she is \u201cliving proof that you can come from a different language background\u201d and still be able to love and become fluent at a language.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of Ms. Hall\u2019s goals this year is to focus on utilizing the Spanish language as much as possible. She realizes that some are hesitant to use the language because they\u2019re afraid that they won\u2019t use it correctly. Ms. Hall hopes to eliminate this barrier between different levels of proficiencies among her students. \u201cConference Period is a huge factor in this challenge,\u201d she says, as it allows students to see her for extra help. Ms. Hall hopes that she will be able to teach students to be proactive about coming to see her for extra help to identify their weaknesses. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Vicky Gu ’20 This year, Ms. Sara Hall joins the Middle School as a new teacher in the Spanish Department. She will teach Spanish levels 1A and 2. Before coming to Pingry, Ms. Hall taught Spanish for 9 years in Illinois and Connecticut, mostly in urban public schools. She has also taught at various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":1595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[35,33,37],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","tag-faculty","tag-faculty-and-staff","tag-new-faculty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1596,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}