Upper School Spanish
Vicki attended college in the state of New York at SUC at Brockport, 1975-77, and SUNY, Binghamton, 1977-79 where she received a BA in Comparative Literature. She also attended Appalachian State University where she received a teaching certificate in Secondary Education Spanish. She was a student of foreign languages, Spanish major and German minor, with reading knowledge in French. Vicki took French in high school and college and has taken graduate classes at the University of Virginia. She loves to read, hike, canoe, and travel. On many of her family vacations she has traveled to Spanish speaking countries such as Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Belize. She has also visited Canada and various parts of the eastern United States. Vicki’s father was Austrian and she grew up with foreign language.
Vicki’s teaching career began in public high school where she taught for six years, 1982-88.She sponsored a Spanish Club there and traveled to Mexico and Spain with her students. She began teaching Spanish at Grymes in 1994 to students in junior kindergarten through eighth grades. She loves the small class size and the opportunity to know each child as an individual. Her students feel comfortable to call her at home with questions. She recognizes that the students at Grymes are eager to learn and that makes teaching them a pleasure. Often, Vicki continues to tutor students in Spanish after they graduate from Grymes so they will continue to progress in the language. Her educational philosophy is that “each student can achieve something great whether in art, music, foreign language, or other academic areas and the teachers at Grymes help them find that special niche.” Vicki has energy and enthusiasm which is contagious for her students and colleagues. She and her husband, Burt, have two sons Erik and Jack, who both graduated from Grymes. They live in the community of Etlan in Madison County with a menagerie of animals.