Casey Hannah

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

My name is Casey Hannah, and I teach Spanish. This year, I have Spanish 3, and then I’ll teach AP Spanish this spring also.

How do you like the environment at Granite Bay so far? 

It’s been really great. Like, my students are just really kind, and I enjoy working with them. Everyone else who works here has just been very welcoming, so it’s been a really good transition.

Why did you decide to teach Spanish?

I actually started out teaching English in Spain, and I really kind of went just because I wanted to go to Spain, but I really liked teaching. So then when I decided to come back to the US, it kind of made sense to teach Spanish. I actually like teaching Spanish more than English. I think it’s more interesting, and I think I’m better at it, because I had to actually learn it as a second language, so I think I’m better at explaining it. This is my 15th year teaching Spanish.

What’s your favorite unit to teach in Spanish?

One unit that I really like teaching is in AP. There’s a unit on science technology, and I wouldn’t necessarily consider those to be my strongest interests or anything, but I just thought it was like really interesting conversations to have with students and just to hear their conversations with each other. 

If students are interested in taking Spanish, what would you recommend?

I think Spanish is the first language I studied, besides English, so I really love Spanish, but I actually think it’s more important that students take a language. It doesn’t have to be Spanish, so, you know, here we offer French as well. I think that’s a really good choice and, in the world, there’s all kinds of languages you can speak, but I think that learning a new language is really awesome because it gives you insight into different cultures and just a different way of thinking that you maybe didn’t know that existed before.

In your free time, what do you like to do? Any hobbies?

I really love traveling, and I guess that kind of goes with languages. If I’m traveling to a country, you know, a non English, non Spanish speaking country, I like to try to learn a little bit of the language. I might just do like Duolingo or something. And I really love just eating different foods and trying different restaurants, when I’m home or around here in the city, and definitely when I’m traveling.

Laura Stannard

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

My name is Laura Stannard, but kids call me Senora “S”. I teach Spanish 1 and Spanish 2.

Do you like the school environment so far at GBHS?

I love GBHS. All three of my sons came and graduated from here, and this has just been an awesome place to watch my children grow up. This is an awesome community for kids to go to school, and the activities are amazing, the curriculum is amazing, every teacher really puts their heart and soul into teaching, and even my children now that are graduated college or in college say that some of their hardest classes were at Granite Bay, not in college.

How long have you been teaching Spanish for?

27 years, a long time. I started in 1995 when I graduated college at University of Nebraska, and then I taught in Nebraska for one year.  I moved back home, because I’m from San Diego, so I taught in San Diego for five years. Then, my husband got a job in Sacramento, so we moved to the Natomas area, so I taught at Natomas High School. So, then they built Intercom High School, and I was asked to move over to Intercom, and I was the world language department chair and activities director. Then, I had a bunch of children, so I worked at ARC ( American River College) at nighttime, teaching Spanish. We moved to Granite Bay, and I taught at Olympus and Cavitt Junior High for nine years, and now I came here.

Why did you decide to teach Spanish?

I actually was going to teach social studies. History was my passion. Then, I minored in Spanish because during college, I studied abroad in Queretaro, Mexico, and I just needed one more class to get a major in Spanish, so that I decided to just go ahead and double major. So (for) my first job, I actually taught Government, US history and only, like, one class of Spanish. In my next job, when I went to San Diego, I taught English, social studies, which was like a three block period, and then, I taught Spanish. And I just realized that Mesopotamia is very boring to teach, and Spanish is super fun, because you get to go back to kindergarten and you get to learn like you would as a kindergartner. You still learn the letters and the sounds, and you get to learn language, and you get to dance and you get to sing, and when you’re teaching Ancient Egypt, it’s not as fun. 

If students are interested in taking Spanish, why would you recommend it?

Why? I have 100 reasons why. First of all, there’s so many people, not just in the whole world, but in the United States, that speak Spanish. So it’s so important to communicate, right? It’s also really good for any job that you want to get to, because no matter what qualifications you have, if you are bilingual, they’re going to hire you above anybody else. So in this competitive job market, if you have a leg up and you’re able to speak a language that you can now use in your job worth trade or whatever you’re doing, then you’ll get not only the job before somebody else, but you’ll also get paid more. So everybody likes more money, right? And it’s super important. Also, my favorite thing is, like, look at me. I’m a green guy, a white girl, right? No one ever thinks I know Spanish. So like, if you’re standing in line at McDonald’s and these people are talking, talking, talking in Spanish, and they don’t realize that you can speak Spanish, you can always turn around and go into their conversation, and they turn white as a ghost, and it’s really funny to do that we didn’t know she was listening. And then they think, oh my gosh, did I say anything mean?

In our free time, what’s your favorite thing to do? Do you have any hobbies outside of school?

So I have three children, three boys, that keep me very, very busy. They all play multiple levels of sports. My favorite thing is going to watch them play on my own. I take an hour a day to run or go to Orangetheory. That is my coffee. I don’t drink coffee, but I need to, like, get all my endorphins out and run, run, run. Then, I just like to hang out with my friends and my husband.

Is there anything else that you like people to know about you?

I want every student to know that they are more than capable of learning a language, and I hope that they will want to take the most beautiful language in the world, which is Spanish.

Sonia Hale

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

My name is Sonia Hale, and as you know, this is my first year at Granite Bay High School. I’ve worked at several of the schools in the district, but I came to teaching high school later in my career. I had some other careers beforehand. I actually taught preschool, and I taught college before. I finally landed in high school and actually took a break from teaching for an extended period of time where I really just focused on running and traveling, and I worked in a restaurant. It was actually a really super great part of my life.

Why did you decide to work at Granite Bay High School?

I actually knew a couple of the teachers here already, and they really, really loved it here, and so they spoke really highly of Granite Bay, particularly like the teaching conditions. Just like a lot of trust and respect for teachers, a lot of camaraderie among the staff, commitment to excellence, like those are all things that are really attractive to me, but also a more selfish reason. My nieces are going to be here in just a couple years. High school can be really hard, and so I just want to be here to help them navigate challenges that high school will be.

Why did you decide to teach English?

Actually as a kid, I got a certificate, like in the second grade for my determination to be a teacher. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I always really loved being in school. I liked to learn, and I liked to be in a community of learners. But by the time I actually got to college, I initially thought I would teach elementary school. I had spent some time teaching preschool and working with small kids. I really like little kids too. And then once I started getting more into my upper division classes, I was pretty sure I was going to go to law school, and I wanted to do some sort of helping, so peace studies or child advocacy law. But I took a class the last year of college, and it was a rhetoric and composition class. It was about writing, and it just really piqued my interest in curiosity (from) the way that we can use language and writing to better understand ourselves and better understand the world, and that we could learn to see the world and new experiences through writing and through texts. So instead of going to law school, I went to graduate school instead, and then I ended up doing a credential years later and coming back to teach high school.

What’s your teaching style like?

I like kind of a messy class. I think thinking is messy, and so we’re kind of, like, moving and shaking a lot of the class period. It’s a pretty loud and collaborative environment where I ask students to work together and to get up and to move around and to talk to new people and to take risks and those sorts of things. So I would say that my teaching style is probably to ask students to take a lot of responsibility for their learning and to practice having a lot of freedom in the choices that they make and as they’re learning to be better learners. My goal isn’t that you’re just successful in my class. My goal is that by the time you finish class with me, you know more about who you are, how you learn well and what you need to be successful, because that stuff you guys just take with you forever.

What’s your favorite book that you would recommend?

A book that lots of students are reading and loving is probably Refugee by Alan Gratz. So that’s a book that I recommend to students a lot, and students tend to really love it. Another book that I recommend to students a lot that they tend to really love is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Both of those are ninth grade books that students tend to read and love. For my older students, like my 11th grade students, two books that I really recommend are The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Both of those are memoirs, and they’re true stories that help students see historical moments and political realities from people’s real, lived experiences. And so it seems to really mesh well with what we’re doing in 11th grade, because 11th graders are starting to really think about the world in ways of, like, justice and injustice, and how our environment shapes our experiences, and all of those sorts of things.

In your free time, what do you like to do? Any hobbies?

I love to be out in nature. I love to read. I really love to travel, and then I also have watched Grey’s Anatomy, like, probably four times all the way through. So there’s a couple of shows that I’ll watch over and over again. So if I’m not with family and friends or out in nature or reading, that’s probably what I’m doing.

Is there anything else that you would like people to know about you?

I guess this is kind of corny, but I think being smart is cool. I think that we should really normalize that being smart and working hard is actually cool and is a reward of its own!