Libby Karow, Lower School Spanish teacher at Oak Hall School, won the 2011 Florida Foreign Language Teacher of the Year award in elementary education at the Florida Foreign Language Association conference on October 18, 2011.
Karow’s teaching style is completely focused on the children. She creates positive, enriching activities that are tailored specifically for her students. She teaches Spanish the way people acquire their first language: through immersion. However, Karow teaches language with a twist, using “thematic immersion.” She understands that 1st graders don’t care about memorizing vocabulary or conjugating verbs. They want to wear funny hats, sing songs, build with blocks and dress up. She does all of this entirely in Spanish. Karow says that by second grade she can say to her students, “Cuántos niños tienen camisas rojas?” All of the students will then turn around, count how many of their friends are wearing red shirts and answer her back in Spanish.
Her hopes are to expand Oak Hall’s global education into Uruguay. She would like to receive a grant to implement a thematic immersion program for the students in South America struggling to grasp English.Ideally, she wants to link Uruguayan classrooms to teachers reading and talking in English at Oak Hall.
Mrs. Karow firmly believes that acquiring a foreign language will be a global imperative as our children become young adults. “The emerging high school students might be the last generation that can reach the pinnacle of success without being bi-lingual,” said Karow.