Serena Keeney-Horsch
This month’s Teacher of the Month features Ms. Serena Keeney-Horsch of Washington Grove Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Keeney-Horsch knew she wanted to be an educator since a young age; she loved school growing up, and even loved receiving school supplies as Christmas gifts. In high school, Keeney-Horsch had an incredible opportunity to participate in a student exchange program in Spain. This experience helped her find her passion for Spanish, which led her to study the language at the university level. While in college, she learned about Teach for America and soon joined the program; this organization gave her the opportunity to unite her three passions – community outreach, the Spanish language, and education – into one job. Her first job was at C.S. 211 in the Bronx where her students, "grew me up and taught me how to be a teacher.
Her next job found her on the opposite coast of the country, in Pomona, California. Here, she taught kindergarten in a dual language program. After a year of teaching, Keeney-Horsch and her husband joined the Peace Corps, which found then in Suriname. The couple taught English to villagers in the local elementary school in a jungle and worked with a literacy group for women in the native tongue of Saramaccans.
After her time in the Peace Corps, Serena enrolled in graduate school at George Washington University where she pursued Bilingual Special Education. The program included a year internship at one of the local elementary schools.
Post-graduation, Keeney-Horsch started a dual language program at Kemp Mill Elementary School alongside Nancy Evans, her formal principal and Barbara Lambert, a teacher colleague. The program was one of the first in dual language programs in Montgomery Public Schools, and after 18 years, it is still going strong.
Continue reading about Ms. Keeney-Horsch on the next page…
It has been a unique mixture of fortuitousness, a desire to make a difference in the lives of others, and a lot of hard work Keeney-Hosch describes when recalling the beginning of her journey as an educator.
Along the way, she was inspired by teachers; Ms. Koehler, her high school Spanish teacher, for example, did not have her students work on worksheets, but "brincando" around the room alongside other physically-responsive activities. In her professional life, she learned from Dr. Barbara Flores about inspiring her children to read, acknowledging that you can become literate even if you are not a native Speaker to the language (as in her case with Spanish). Ms. Nancy Evans her former principal whom she calls a "visionary" knew that offering children a second language would provide them with more access to what this world has to offer.
Her favorite part of being an educator has not changed since her school girl days; she still has a soft spot for the school supplies! Keeney-Hosch also enjoys sharing books with her students. She loves the metacognition that she sees in students as they navigate learning a new language.
I love watching the light bulb go on and hearing my students start to use Spanish and make connections between languages. . . I love the validation that my Spanish-speaking students receive when they are the "experts" and have much to share with their peers…I know that I am in the right place and doing the right thing.
Over the course of her career, she has presented at professional conferences that include: MICCA (Maryland Instructional Computers Coordinators Association), GWATFL (Greater Washington Association of Teachers of Foreign Language), and at NABE "Promoting the Bilingual Special Education Interface through a Professional Development School". These experiences have helped her in her professional development, bringing current research and practices back to her classroom and student
Continue reading about Ms. Keeney-Horsch on the next page…
This space is a place where biliteracy is lived each and every day, and if they forget, there is a bulletin board with the words, "¡Somos bilingües!" are there to remind them. The students are learning the lifelong benefits of bilingualism and biliteracy. They understand that their hard work will provide them with access to opportunities and open up the world to them. This is achieved because each day, the students navigate through at least two cultures. They are able to help new arrivals to their classrooms. This is a place where the minority language of Spanish has an elevated status and the students with the language skills have something only they can offer to their peers.
Sra. Keeney-Horsch has witnessed the shift from an urgency of teaching English to students to embracing "bilingualism and biliteracy as marketable and respectable assets." She hopes that her students will be lifelong learners who never give up and work hard, even in the face of difficult challenges.
We congratulate Sra. Keeney-Horsch as the November teacher of the month and wish her continued success in her classroom.
