This school year, Robinson has welcomed 19 new staff members to the faculty, one being traditional Spanish teacher, Siara Espejo. Espejo graduated from Robinson in 2012 and soon after started assisting with choreography for our school color guard, the Starlets.

“I realized that I enjoyed helping students a lot more than I thought I would,” Espejo said. This was her incentive to become a teacher.

Espejo attended Hillsborough Community College in the honors program as well as the University of South Florida, wanting to learn Spanish because most of her family didn’t speak English and she spoke no Spanish at all.

“My dad’s side only speaks Basque and Spanish,” Espejo said. She didn’t know how to communicate with half of her family, which was insufferable for her.

“Family means a lot to me,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t know myself as a person because I couldn’t speak to half of who I was.”

This disconnection was her drive to learn to speak Spanish. She graduated from USF in 2016, earning her bachelor’s degree in World Culture and Languages with a concentration on Hispanic and Latino studies. From there, she decided teaching was the route she wanted to take.

Señora Espejo has a unique teaching style from the rest of the teachers in the school. She does lots of hands-on activities to give her students an opportunity to have fun in school.

“She’s very down to earth with the class and I like how intricate yet simple she is with her work,” Elena Bazile (’21) said.

Her enthusiastic persona is one of the many reasons it’s enjoyable for students to show up to class everyday, providing her students with a safe learning atmosphere.