Amy Conroy
Founder & Instructor

An Anthropologist, educator, and mother of three young children, Amy grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs in a typical mono-lingual English speaking environment. She spent a semester immersed in Spanish at the University of Salamanca, Spain, while an undergraduate at UCLA (B.A. 1994). And by the time graduate school came along, Spanish had become a growing passion and major part of Amy's studies. While earning her Masters degree in Anthropology at San Francisco State University (M.A. 2000), she spent most of her non-classroom time polishing her Spanish speaking skills in the cities and jungles of Central America.

After Graduate school Amy went back to the roots of her own foreign language education and taught introductory Spanish to freshman and sophomore students at Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro, California. She later worked in the Anthropology department of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County attempting to bridge the hard science world with public education.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, she began researching and studying language acquisition of young children. Further linguistic and anthropological research clearly supported exposing your child young in a fun way, but finding the right teaching tools proved to be a challenge. In a quest to create appropriate teaching materials for mono-lingual families, Amy has created music and classes that guarantee children's exposure to Spanish will come with laughs and smiles for the whole family.


Laura Earley
Instructor

Laura works for First 5 Los Angeles project coaching Family Child Care Providers in early childhood education best practices, family engagement, and connecting with their community resources . She received her B.A. specializing in Elementary Education from California State University, Los Angeles in 2001 and will return to graduate school to pursue her Master's degree in Educational Psychology with an Emphasis in Early Childhood Education in Spring 2009. As a bilingual speaker, Laura has over 10 years of experience working with children of many ages and backgrounds. Her warm spirit and gregarious personality engage children and adults navigating a new language ~ she creates a fun and stimulating environment that seems more like a Spanish playdate than a class!

Valeria Mason
Instructor

Valeria was raised in Mexico City with a passion for music and languages: she is fluent in French and English, and, of course, her native tongue, Spanish. Wonderfully gifted with the violin, Valeria has taught children and adults since 2002 and was last the Dean of the Department of Strings for the Escuela Nacional de Musica, UNAM. Valeria is also a member of the Suzuki Method Association since 2003, an educational philosophy intended to nurture the student in music as happens in the organic acquisition of native language learning - the perfect complement to the philosophy and practices of habla blah blah!

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