Oak Park spanish teacher is this year's third Golden Apple nominee for District 97

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 10:00 PM

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Immersed: Elizabeth Chase Vivas starts her students on the path to being bi-lingual.
Courtesy District 97

By Terry Dean

Staff reporter

Many high-schoolers spend their semesters traversing the halls on their way to class or hanging out with friends at the mall, among the many other things teenagers do.

Elizabeth Chase Vivas spent her high school semester living in Mexico. She "fell in love" with the people and culture. She would go on to study Spanish, an experience that inspired her career.

Now the Golden Apple Foundation, based in Chicago, has recognized Vivas, a District 97 teacher, with a Golden Apple nomination. Two other D97 teachers have received nominations this year — Marvin Childress of Lincoln and Cristina Arroyo at Irving. Nominations were announced this month; the winners will be announced next spring.

Vivas teaches Spanish immersion to kindergartners at Lincoln School, 1111 S. Grove. She previously taught fourth- and fifth-graders. Vivas has never before been nominated for a Golden Apple, which honors outstanding Chicago-area teachers. She has taught in D97 for nine years, all at Lincoln, and for 11 years prior to that in the Chicago Public School system.

D97's Spanish immersion program — a popular program among parents and kids — allows teachers to instruct their students exclusively in the Spanish language. Vivas stresses it's good to learn a foreign language at a young age.

"They're very open and don't feel as nervous about it," she said of her kindergarteners. "They're open to receiving the language and they're not afraid of it."

Vivas says she uses a lot of visuals with her students. She may draw a picture or act out different words. She'll also have them counting numbers with blocks or other items. Her former Spanish teachers did something similar — one teacher had students writing letters to people in Spanish. Vivas also tries to get her students involved in their own learning.

"Students at any grade level can be very independent. The more ownership they can have of their education, they will run with it," she said.

Growing up in her native Iowa, Vivas, a married mother of three, was not exposed to different cultures. She recalled her parents, both now retired teachers, talking family trips to Mexico when she was in junior high. By the time she was 16, she was living with a Mexican family who were friends of her parents. She did not speak Spanish fluently then.

In college, Vivas lived in Spain for a semester. While attending Grinnell College in Iowa, she participated in a summer program on bilingual education. That hit a nerve.

"That's when it all connected for me," she recalled. "I became interested in the idea of connecting language with education."

"Growing up in Iowa, it was pretty homogenous," she added. "Living in Mexico, I just loved it. It was good to be so immersed in a different culture. It opened the world to me."