Not too long ago, there were three girls: one in Portugal, one in Italy, and one in the United States. Now, they are all Spanish teachers at Wando High School.

Spanish One and Spanish Three Honors teacher Estefania Cunha was born in France, but spent many of her school years in Portugal. 

“My mother moved to France when she was only 13 years-old with my grandfather. There was a lot of poverty in Portugal, mainly poverty, and… at the time, there was a dictatorship. So both my mom and dad fled the country pretty much for a better life… My father was 18, and he also left the country because… they were gonna send [him] to war in Africa… and France needed workers, because this is post-World War II… in the 50s,” Cunha said. “[We] went back because they wanted to… have their own business.”

Halfway across southern Europe, Spanish One and Spanish Four Honors teacher Martina Abbriano spent her childhood on the island of Sicily.

“I grew up in Palermo, Sicily… it’s one of the regions of Italy,” Abbriano said. “[I] also speak Sicilian, which is the language of Sicily. It’s not an official language or anything, but… it is a dialect… more or less, of Italian. But if I were to speak totally Sicilian to someone that’s not from Sicily, they wouldn’t necessarily understand.”

On an entirely different continent, Spanish One and AP Spanish Language and Culture teacher Kailey Keels’ passion for languages began in her hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado.

“I took Spanish in high school and… I continued taking Spanish in college because… I just like languages. I like to read. I like all things words,” Keels said. “But I got out of college and… I had a journalism degree and didn’t want to be a journalist, so I was like, maybe I’ll go teach abroad and live abroad. So I taught in Chile, and had probably intermediate-mid Spanish, and then had to run a fifth grade classroom, and it was a nightmare. So I learned real fast ‘cause I had to survive.”

On the other hand, multiple languages have always been a part of Cunha’s daily life.

“French… is my first one, because that’s where I was born and grew up. But because my parents were both Portuguese, they would speak Portuguese at home so… I was not very good at speaking it, but I could understand. And… Spanish was because when I moved back to Portugal at the age of 12, we lived really close to the border of Spain… so it’s all intertwined there. And then English came from school, because you learn in Europe, you have to start since you’re little… sixth or seventh grade all the way to your senior year. You have to take it every year, every day,” Cunha said.

As for Abbriano, two new languages were thrust into her life at the age of 16.

“I moved to the US when I was 16 years old… because my parents got a job in Charleston, and I’m one of four kids, and they just wanted to give us a better future… It was kind of hard at first, especially because of the language barrier. But it got easier as I… made friends and started speaking English and… I was able to sort of become accustomed to this new culture and this new lifestyle,” Abbriano said. “I learned Spanish because when I moved here, I was in the [English for Speakers of Other Languages] class to learn English, and a bunch of my friends spoke Spanish, and because Spanish and Italian are similar, it was just kind of easy to learn it.”

Cunha found her way to the United States in a different way, but her path would still eventually cross with Abbriano’s.

“I ended up [in the US] after I lived in Australia for a year after I was done with my master’s in Portugal… and then I did an exchange program in Memphis with the University of Memphis,” Cunha said. “Then they asked me, ‘your background is in education… Do you want to teach?’ Because there’s always a need for teacher[s], and I was certified in French and Spanish.”

Abbriano, meanwhile, was inspired by her own teachers to become one herself.

“I became a teacher because I felt like when I was a student, especially my ESL teacher, was a really big advocate for me and for other kids that didn’t know English… and so I think that really inspired me to fully become an advocate for other students,” Abbriano said.

After her experience in Chile, Keels also found that her passion was in teaching.

“I figured out I wanted to be a teacher, started teaching English as a Second Language, and again, had to use tons of Spanish stuff,” Keels said. “A lot of our English as a Second Language Teachers in the district have to travel from school to school to do it, and I didn’t want to do that, and so I proposed becoming part time Spanish, part time [Multilingual Learners]… teacher.”

Finally, from three different countries and with five different languages between them, the three teachers united at Wando High School, teaching all levels of Spanish to the next generation of language learners.

“I think it’s important [to learn languages], ’cause… I feel like I have a slightly different personality, like I’m a slightly different person in each of the languages that I speak,” Abbriano said. “I feel like language also is a product of culture, and so I think it’s important because it really allows you to see and truly understand a culture, and the way people live, and the way people speak, and the specific terms that they use a lot of times reflect… their lifestyle, or their culture, and what’s going on in their world. So I think that’s super interesting, and that’s why it’s important.”