Practicing What We Teach: Springfield Prep’s Spanish Club

Spanish Club members practicing before school.

Every Friday morning, before the school day officially begins, a group of Springfield Prep staff members gathers — not because they have to, but because they want to. Spanish Club meets before school, is entirely voluntary, and is led by ESL Coordinator Maggie Collins. The club is about something simple and powerful: honoring students’ and families’ linguistic backgrounds by stepping into the vulnerability of learning alongside one another.

Maggie Collins, ESL Coordinator

“It’s not a place where we’re trying to be perfect… It’s just like, let’s actually use Spanish, and let’s get together and do it with real people.”

For Maggie, Spanish Club grew out of a familiar frustration she heard from teachers again and again. “Over the years, a lot of teachers have said to me, like, I’m practicing on Duolingo, I’m doing all these things, and I don’t feel like I’m progressing in my Spanish.” She explains that Spanish Club offers something different from language apps or formal classes. “It’s a chance for people to actually use Spanish — not just repeat what they’ve heard on an app… but have a chance to grapple with real-world conversations and have to, in the moment, come up with their own ideas and talk to each other.” The goal isn’t perfection. “It’s not a place where we’re trying to be perfect… It’s just like, let’s actually use Spanish, and let’s get together and do it with real people.”

One of the strengths of Spanish Club is the wide range of experience among participants. As Maggie puts it, “We have people who took French in high school and college, and here students use Spanish a lot and want to learn it… and we have people who’ve lived in Spain, or people whose mom spoke Spanish growing up.” That range has become an asset, not a barrier. Everyone learns from each other, and the space is intentionally low-stakes and supportive. Maggie notes that this mirrors what she sees with multilingual students she works with every day — that with the right scaffolds, people can communicate far more than they expect. “They come, they’re nervous… but giving them the right little scaffolds and keywords, they’re actually able to jump in and participate and leave feeling like they understood so much more than they thought they would.”

Spanish Club is also deeply connected to Maggie’s vision for multilingualism at Springfield Prep. “Being multilingual is cool. Being multilingual is a life skill. It’s an asset,” she explains.

Springfield Prep kindergarteners celebrating their multilingualism.

And for her, it’s important that this belief is embodied, not just stated. “If we’re sending this message to families to promote multilingualism and literacy in their home language, I think it’s really a cool way for us to show that we mean that… we’re not just complimenting you from afar — we want to be part of this journey, too.” For teachers, that means pushing themselves to try something hard, to be vulnerable, and to better understand what families experience every day.

That effort doesn’t go unnoticed. Teachers often bring what they’re learning directly to their classrooms, practicing with students and inviting them into the process. Maggie has seen how meaningful that can be. Multilingual students are “so supportive and so excited to say, like, wow, my teacher wants to learn the language that my family knows.” In those moments, students get to be the experts — and the message lands in a powerful way: “It’s so cool that you know another language. In fact, it’s so cool that I am also trying to learn it.”