Español is a language many students in America study throughout their high school years. A majority of the time people might think time and effort are what help you accomplish learning a second language. While this is true, it also comes down to the passion the teacher puts into teaching the language. After attending the University of Illinois and majoring in Spanish, as well as minoring in computer science, Mrs. Sturm became a teacher.

Mrs. Sturm, also known as Señora Sturm, has engaged with the Spanish language for 20 years. Before her career at St. Ed’s she was teaching at Indian Creek High School, a public school in Shabbona, Illinois, where she taught Spanish for six years. Coming from a public school to a private school can be very different, “I notice behavior is a lot better. Students are definitely more responsive, when I ask them to do something they’re more likely to say yes. Overall, I notice that students really want to learn Spanish.” 

Señora Sturm has noticed the passion many of her students have for learning the Spanish language, “I have a lot of students that actually have a reason for wanting to learn it, whether it’s because they want to be able to communicate more with family members or they just actually care about the language.”

St. Edward offers students the opportunity to learn Spanish, French, or German. Mrs. Sturm takes much appreciation into this because she came from a school where Spanish was the only language offered to students, “Spanish was the only language that was offered, so if they (students) wanted to take a foreign language it was Spanish.”

Señora Sturm found St. Ed’s to be an appealing teaching space because of the faith based community, “Having it be a place where faith is important was appealing to me. I’m not Catholic, but I am deeply Christian and I just really appreciate being able to be honest about my faith. I wanted to be in an environment that cares about more than just content and cares most about the students.”

Outside of school Señora Sturm enjoys spending time with her family. She has been married to her husband for 8 years now and together they have two kids who are five and three. Although Señora doesn’t have much free time she mentioned that she enjoys eating and cooking. 

Mrs. Sturm believes traveling to countries that speak the language you are learning help a lot. She traveled to Ecuador for 1 month and in Spain for 4 months, “I was only there for four months. I would have loved to go for a full year, but I decided kind of late that I wanted to be a Spanish teacher (end of sophomore year of college). It really helped me, I felt like it made me realize how much I already knew and I was kind of just filling in the blanks.”