About me

I'm Anita Saalfeld (aka Profe), and I've been teaching Spanish 1-4 at Fort Calhoun since 2017.  I've been teaching Spanish since 1999, when as a clueless new grad student in a Spanish literature master's degree program at UNL, I was thrown into a Spanish 1 classroom with a book, a syllabus, and a couple days of teacher training.  I loved the opportunity to share my enthusiasm for Spanish, but recognized that I lacked a lot of experience and expertise in teacher training.  When I finished my master's degree, I decided I wanted to pursue additional study in applied linguistics, so that I would understand how people learn languages, and how we can best facilitate that through our teaching.  I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in conjunction with my doctorate in Hispanic linguistics, I pursued a graduate certificate in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education.  I finally finished my doctorate in 2009, 15 years after I started college.  Along the way, I've taught a number of different Spanish courses at various colleges and universities (if you're interested, you can see the full list of courses I've taught here, and you can see my educational credentials here). 

I'm interested in providing students with travel opportunities because my own experience traveling was a life-changing part of my educational experience. I completed a semester study abroad in Heredia, Costa Rica, in 1998 as part of my Spanish major at UNL, which provided me with the opportunity to become a fluent Spanish speaker, as well as to meet new people and experience a new culture firsthand.  I want my students to have this experience, and I hope that many of them will choose to continue their education by completing a study abroad program after they graduate from high school.