A young, energetic new lecturer has popped up on campus this year with incoming faculty. Heather Young will be tackling the responsibility of being a Spanish teacher.
Young’s story is one of resistance, faith and the battle between them that led to discovery.
Her love for Spanish started in high school. “I realized there were all these people in the world that I would never get to meet because I only spoke one language.”
She went on to complete her undergraduate work at the College of New Jersey, and Young found that she was one of the only Spanish majors who was not also involved in education. “I had absolutely no interest in teaching,” Young said. “I refused to consider it.”
After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Spanish, Young found herself faced with the daunting task of trying to find a school at which to continue on with graduate work.
When she couldn’t find a school with a good program concentrating on translation and interpretation, she decided to try the “alternate route” program, a program designed to certify teachers through a year of research programs and teaching classes. Young spent three years on the secondary education level learning how to become a teacher. “Once I got in, I loved it!”
Young was finally able to enroll in full-time grad school at Temple and finished her master’s degree last December.
As for ending up at Eastern, a friend of a friend referred her here after she had sent out many resumes. Although she hadn’t heard about Eastern before, Young was excited by the promise of combining her faith and teaching.
Teaching in itself is definitely rewarding for Young as she loves “showing [students] that can really speak the language, that it’s not all memorization and vocabulary.