Teachers

Paola Almeida Guerra is from Guayaquil, Ecuador.  She is an avid teacher and researcher and enjoys interacting with students and colleagues at all levels.  Paola holds a PhD in Environmental Science and is a professor at ESPOL in her home country as well as at CU as a visitor scholar.  In addition to her zeal for the environment, Paola is very passionate about teaching Spanish and guiding Spanish learners on their way to acquiring the necessary skills to practice this beautiful language in their personal and professional lives.  Paola enjoys traveling and has found intercultural experiences gained from international travel to be some of the most enriching of her life.

David Faulkner holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish, with an emphasis in teaching, and has taught Spanish in every grade from fourth to the university level. He is passionate about the fundamentals of language, as well as interpersonal communication and personal expression, particularly where their practical application has a positive impact on people’s lives. David is the author of Superheroes (2015) and De cabo a rabo (2017), but his true calling is teaching Spanish and inspiring others to practice it in their daily lives. When he’s not teaching, David enjoys spending time with his two children, traveling the world, and staying active. He is an idealist and a relentless dreamer, reveling in the happiness of pursuit.

Boulder Spanish teacher and director Varón Osorio is from Mérida, Yucatán, México. He is a bilingual educator, artist, and entrepreneur who has mastered the art of teaching both the English and Spanish languages. ​At a young age, he was initiated in Latin and classical Greek etymology and followed a career in teaching both Spanish and English. He has now accumulated twenty years of experience and has taught thousands of students from over forty nations in elementary schools, junior and senior high schools, universities, and many private language schools in both the United States and Mexico.

Miriam Himes is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where she earned both her Bachelors and Masters in Spanish Language and Literature. During her academic career, Miriam worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Spanish department as well as a tutor for students of all ages. She taught at her university for a year before moving out west to Colorado this fall. She has also had the opportunity to travel to a myriad of Spanish-speaking countries for extended periods of time including Costa Rica, Ecuador, Perú, the Dominican Republic, and completed her study abroad in Spain. Miriam enjoys teaching with a culture and social justice focused methodology and works hard to stay educated on current political issues facing the Spanish-speaking community and is constantly working to become a better ally to marginalized groups here in the U.S. When she isn’t working, Miriam loves to read feminist theory and poetry, go on long walks and hikes with her two dogs, and listen to music.

Javier Acevedo De La Torre started developing a passion for teaching the Spanish language since he arrived to the U.S. for the first time in 2008. He has taught philosophy of politics and philosophy of language and logic in the Aurora Community College since January 2018. Although he was born in Tepetongo, which is a small town from Zacatecas, Mexico, he started traveling to the U.S. since he was 8 years old. Join us for the programs where Javier will teach basic tools to acquire the Spanish language from scratch, and get some practice to become proficient in a conversational level. His skills for teaching are exceptional and he will answer questions succinctly about the underlying grammar of the Spanish language