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Summer Welcome Video

Hola, yo soy la Profesora Casler

y soy de Meadow Vista, California.

I am Professor Casler

and I'm from Meadow Vista, California.

And I'm excited to have you join

me this summer term for learning

the Spanish language and exploring

the culture of it.

My students call me Profe, or Profesora

or Señora, está bien.

I have been teaching Spanish for a number

of years. I grew up here in California

and was exposed from an early age,

which I really appreciate, and I just kept

kind of stumbling along and learning more

as I went, and the next thing I knew,

I was majoring in it in college.

I studied abroad in Ecuador for a semester

and I studied abroad in Spain

for a semester, and I've never really

quit traveling. I've been to Puerto Rico

and to Mexico, and most recently I've

spent quite a bit of time in Costa Rica

living with an exchange family down there.

And I took my family as well. And I

just love the language and all the doors

that it opens, so I hope that you

will find that it also opens doors

for you. This is an introductory class,

this is for true beginners. It's going to

be fast-paced, because it is a summer

course. It's already a fast-paced course

in a normal semester and then we are

doubling the speed for summer.

I want to say though, that if you already

have experience with Spanish, if you've

take two years of high school or more,

if you've grown up speaking Spanish,

then we can get you into a higher level.

Just let me know; I can help you do

the paperwork. It's easy.

And we can get you into the appropriate

level. If you're someone who wants to

major in Spanish, doing the Sierra College

Spanish AA degree, or the AA-T

degree, which is the Associates for

Transfer, we can short-cut that

for you, and have you go directly

into Spanish 3 or 4, whatever it

is that you are equipped for.

For those of you who are

true beginners, there is no lower

level than this, this is the

very beginning, and I don't leave anyone

behind. I will work just as hard as

you do. If you are struggling with

something, I'm happy to do everything

I can to help you. I will support you,

I will give extra tutoring, I've met

people at different locations

in the region; whatever it is that

you need. There's also lots of

support available through Sierra

College. There's free tutoring, there's

online tutoring as well,

which is 24-7.

And, then there's tutoring on all of

our campuses. So, whatever you need

there's support for that.

This is, as I said, a fast-paced course.

It's a 5-unit course. And I'm not sure if

you're aware, but units are ... I'm going

to say "universal," they are global.

We measure college units as a

Carnegie Unit, and that represents

for every hour that you're in class

there's two hours of study outside

of class. So, this is a 5-unit

course and over a normal semester

that would be five units:

five hours in class and the ten hours

of outside study. So, fifteen hours

a week for Spanish. Since this is

a summer course, we are doing at twice

the speed, so that means that you

are doing essentially ten units

of Spanish a week, and therefore

should be studying another twenty

hours outside. So that's thirty hours

a week. And if you think about that,

that's almost a full-time job.

So I really just want to put it

out there, that if you are going

to be successful in this course,

you will need to be putting in the time

studying, asking questions,

doing activities to practice,

reinforcing things, all of that.

What I like to say is that the more

contact you have, the better you're

going to be. So, staying in constant

contact with the language.

You, in an online class, will be studying

on your own, but we will come together

to share things. So we will post

things for each other, and watch

or read the posts of other students

and then respond to those, periodically.

And, of course I will be looking over

everything, and I will be offering

suggestions and feedback. And students

who reach out to me, as I said before,

I always help and support.

I want to make sure I'm not

forgetting anything here.

There are two places for homework.

One is this Canvas course, and you've

already made it here, so that's

a good start. The other is

with our textbook website that's

called Vista Higher Learning.

Oh, sorry, VHLCentral.com.

Vista Higher Learning is the

larger company, but the homework

site is VHLCentral.com.

And you need to go there to check

the due dates for homework, practice

in that website, and then I'll

feed that back into Canvas

to effect your overall grade.

And, I think that's it! So,

if you have any questions

please feel free to reach out to me.

I'm just excited to get started,

and I wish you great success

in this semester. Chau.