Along with being on the Local School Council Board, sponsor of the International Club, International Skills Diploma Seal Coordinator and the Spanish III Content Team Lead, Señora Hunt is a Spanish teacher at Lambert. Hunt sets herself apart from other teachers with her enthusiastic spirit that fills up her pink classroom that is decked out with art from her students. With a strong connection to her Mexican culture and a passion for teaching, Señora Hunt is an exceptional Spanish teacher.

Hunt has been teaching for 18 years and has spent 5 of them at Lambert. She wasn’t always planning on teaching. When she was in high school, she hoped to join the engineering field one day and actually had a scholarship to attend the University of Texas. When she realized that her heart was in liberal arts, she decided to major in Spanish with a minor in Psychology in Texas. Still confused, she worked as a real estate agent for a year right out of  college until her husband proposed to her and they moved to Atlanta.

“I firmly believe that getting a job is all in who you know,” Señora Hunt said.

She explained that, when they first moved to Atlanta, she had to search to find a job. Her husband’s mom was a Science teacher at Lassiter High School and was very close with the World Languages Department Chair. Hunt’s move to Atlanta was serendipitous because they happened to need a Spanish teacher for the upcoming school year. 

“I just kind of fell in love with it and so it was a good fit,” Hunt said. “I think I had a lot of good support which made me love it more.”

Although it was a challenge to jump straight into teaching Spanish with no professional teaching experience, she enjoyed the advantage that her youth gave her as a teacher; she was able to form bonds and relate to her students with ease. After rolling with the punches and learning on her feet, she ended up getting her teaching certification. 

Señora Hunt spent six years teaching until she succumbed to her ambitious curiosity of the business world. At the time, her husband was working at Dell Computers; their connection landed her a successful position in corporate sales. Working from home began to weigh on her and she got pregnant, so she decided to transition back to teaching so she could be on the same schedule as her children. 

“I felt like I had seen what I wanted to see and had proved what I wanted to prove in the business world and I just wanted a change,” Hunt said.

Hunt quickly found that teaching Spanish was a good fit for her because she was able to connect to her Mexican culture and teach others about it. With this position as a teacher, she hopes to open students’ minds to other cultures.

“I didn’t realize that it could be so much fun to have people be so interested in your own culture and be paid to talk about it,” Hunt said.

Señora Hunt has a strong connection to her culture as most of her mom’s side of the family is from Monterrey, Mexico. She was born in a border town in Texas where the majority of people spoke Spanish as their first language. 

As a testament to her passion for her culture, she sponsors the International Club, which is a club at Lambert that meets the first Thursday of every month in her classroom (2909). The meetings consist of information about different cultures presented in a fun way with different foods from around the world. 

Another component of her job that she thoroughly enjoys is that she gets to know so many different personalities and the growth that she gets to see them go through. 

“I think, especially as I’ve gotten older, and hopefully wiser, it’s the relationships and learning to appreciate everyone for who they are,” Hunt commented. “Not all of us are great teachers or are perfect, and not all students appreciate spanish and not all of them are going to excel, but everyone has their gift and I see that in class and I think not a lot of adults get to see that.”

She loves that every day is different because of her students’ vastly different personalities and that she gets to see a part of students that nobody else but their parents might see.

Señora Hunt expressed that the most challenging part of being a teacher is the constant need to improve and revamp which may detract from teachers’ focus on their students. Change is and will always be a constant in education because it’s a necessity. Raising a future generation is exciting, but it is often underappreciated.

“The challenge is everything that is not the teaching,” Hunt commented.

Although Señora Hunt experiences challenges that almost every other teacher goes through, she is thankful to have a staff as great as Lambert’s and enjoys her role at school. Her positive attitude and supportive staff pull her through the obstacles so that she can focus on her students.

As for the future, Señora Hunt hopes to be able to teach classes at the university level to prepare students for their careers in teaching. She wants to inspire future teachers to stick with it and pass on lessons that she wished she learned when she first started. 

Lambert’s staff is all the better with Señora Hunt in it and we can’t wait to see what her future holds.