Course Length: Six weeks
2024 Schedule: Wednesdays with Joel Baker at 10 am CST/24pm UK
About Summer Courses at Dreaming Spires
Our summer classes are great for homeschoolers who are preparing for high school in the US or exams in the UK, a chance to sample a subject before doing a deep dive for the coming year.
All courses will meet an hour weekly for six weeks. There will be the usual reliance on living books and some homework to ensure good participation, and at the end a certificate will be awarded.
About Spotlight on Spanish: Summer Spanish Club
Our six-week Summer Spanish Club will have its focus on the Spanish world, past and present. It will feature:- Culture presentations from native Spanish speakers and fluent second-language speakers who have lived in Hispanic nations, with question and answer session.
- Hispanic history talks (from Maestro B, probably)
- A photo-rich physical geography talk or two, featuring a Hispanic country
- One extended talk per week, entirely in Spanish.
You need to be able to hold a conversation in Spanish to join the club. This is open to current students Dreaming Spires Spanish, alumni from previous years, and even those who have not had the great fortune to do Spanish with Dreaming Spires!
Who Teaches Summer Spanish Club?
Joel Baker, known to students as Maestro B or Maître B, lives in Somerset, England with his five children whom he has been educating at home for the last 14 years. He is a linguist with a passion for delight-led learning, specialising in Romance languages, speaking and teaching French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. After completing his degree in Spanish and Portuguese at King’s College London in 2006, he trained as a secondary school teacher of French and Spanish, taught at a prep school in Dorset, was employed as a youth worker and ran café language classes for adults for several years. He joined Dreaming Spires in 2017 and currently teaches French 1, 2 & 3 and Spanish 1, 2 & 3, as well as IGCSE crammer courses in French and Spanish. Outside Dreaming Spires, Joel gives private tuition and coaching, including for the US college AP exams, and he conducts GCSE speaking exams at an international school. He also works as a barista-missionary in a nearby Christian café project! See all courses taught by Joel