Fulbright Teaching Assistant Shares Love of Languages, Latin American Culture with Russell Sage College

“I want people to see Latin Americans and the potential that we have and to help break stereotypes,” says Argentina native and Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Maria de los Angeles Salazar. “There’s a lot of amazing things going on.”

Salazar is teaching Spanish language and Latin American culture at Russell Sage College for the 2021-2022 academic year. 

Her courses — including Spanish Conversation through Film, Hispanic Women Writers Honors seminar and Protest Discourse in Latin America — connect Spanish language and Latin American history with literature, visual and performing arts, to better understand how Latin America’s past influences its present. 

Salazar has also been advising Sage’s Spanish language club, teaching Latin dance on campus, singing with the Sagettes acapella group and taking classes in Sage’s Creative and Performing Arts department. 

“I’m using my not-teaching time to develop my arty side,” she says. “The theatre program here is amazing and I’m having a lot of fun.”

In Argentina, Salazar is pursuing her college teaching license while teaching at Colegio San José de Calasanz, the equivalent of a U.S. high school. She also has extensive experience as a language teacher in Colombia. 

Languages have opened up career and educational opportunities for Salazar and for her students in Argentina and Colombia, and that is something else she is emphasizing to her Sage students. 

“What I always want to do is to show my students ways in which learning a second language will benefit their professional life,” she said.