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SPANNING DIVIDES Teacher Althea Valle builds bridges with language by MARINA BROWN
“T
he first things they all want to learn are the cuss words,” Althea Valle laughed in describing her students. Well, doesn’t everybody? But for young non-speakers of English, knowledge of a few “naughties” can mean acceptance and perhaps the beginning of belonging in a new culture and its different ways of communicating. Valle should know. For nearly 20 years, the 2020 Leon County Schools Teacher of the Year has taught English to speakers of other languages. An instructor at Godby High School for 15 years, she previously worked at the elementary school level in Gadsden County before graduating to the secondary school arena and becoming Godby’s English for Students of Other Languages (ESOL) Coordinator. The diminutive Valle has lived an exciting life and seen much of the world. She was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and majored in economics at the University of the West Indies, graduating with honors. Her degree made her attractive to the Jamaican foreign service’s trade mission and, fresh out of college, she became “second secretary” at the Jamaican embassy
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in Belgium. There, Valle collaborated with a variety of countries’ representatives and became fluent in French. After four years, she decided to join her mother, then living in New York City, and eyeing plans to change professions, made plans to earn a master’s degree. But on a trip back to Jamaica, Valle met her husband-to-be, an American on holiday, and those plans shifted dramatically. The couple married, set up a home in the United States, and began a family that would grow to include twin girls, now 32, and two sons, 28 and 25. Valle resumed pursuit of a master’s degree in English. She was determined to become a teacher. “When I had worked in Belgium, learning French had piqued my interest in languages,” she said. “Even now, I don’t consider myself a linguist, although I’ve become a poor Spanish speaker along the way.” Cherith Sivyer became a great inspiration and mentor to Valle, helping her to see “what young people not born here can contribute to our society and how we, in turn, can join together to build bridges between cultures.” Such bridge building isn’t easy.
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Althea Valle, Leon County’s 2020 Teacher of the Year, employs several teaching modalities in working in teaching English to speakers of other languages.
photography by SAIGE ROBERTS
