English is a difficult language to learn. Growing up in Venezuela, Spanish was new foreign language teacher Kenny Navarro’s first language, but English was something that intrigued him.
“When I started seventh grade, I knew that I wanted to learn English,” Navarro said. “English would be good for me because I always wanted to be in education.”
He acquired his degree in Venezuela and taught English for a while. Navarro explains that life in Venezuela was comfortable for Navarro until the economy started to decline due to a shift in political power, this is when he decided to move to Ecuador.
He lived in Ecuador for two years and met his future husband, Jeff Sjuts, who now teaches English. Then the couple decided to move to Nebraska where Sjuts is originally from.
“When he [Sjuts] told me that we were going to live in Nebraska, I thought it was Alaska,” Navarro said.
When they first came to Omaha, Navarro worked at Marrs Middle School teaching seventh-grade Spanish Language Arts. His position in OPS was very different compared to his new role at Elkhorn North.
“I was teaching native Spanish speakers,” Navarro said. “I was not teaching kids how to speak or write because that was their native language.”
While Navarro’s career and language are a large part of his life, he has an interesting hobby that he likes to pursue outside of the classroom: to draw and paint. Navarro enjoys putting art onto vases and he enjoys painting people.
Go visit Mr. Navarro down in the foreign language pod to get to know even more about him!
