Excellent Educator: Senor Jamil Salaam Of Richfield Dual Language School
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Most of us are happy to not take our work home with us. Sometimes you just want to go home, turn on the TV and veg. But not one teacher in Richfield.
Senor Jamil Salaam loves teaching in Spanish so much, his lessons continue even around the dinner table with his family. That's what makes him this week's Excellent Educator.
It's rare to find Salaam speaking English in his classroom at Richfield Dual Language School. For 5 years, he's been working his dream job teaching fifth-graders -- all subjects in Spanish.
Salaam grew up in an English speaking household, but always valued the ability to speak other languages.
"In the United States, it's very handy to be bilingual as the population, demographics continue to change," he said."
Half of his students are learning Spanish as a second language. For the other half, it's their native language, which gives them a leg up on their teacher.
"A lot of times they'll have the vocabulary I'm looking for and I'll say 'Hey, can you help me?' Or they'll say 'Senor Salaam that's not how you say it,'" he said. "That's one of the things I love about being a teacher is I'm always learning, they challenge me to improve in Spanish as well as in my teaching."
To understand Salaam's passion for education, you have to go back to his teenage years. His wife tells us he was inspired by his favorite hip hop group Public Enemy.
"In the lyrics, he said they talked about freeing the mind and doing that through education," Nichole Salaam said. "From there I think a seed was planted."
Now he's working to plant the desire to learn in all young minds. Not only in his classroom, but at home, from teaching his four children jujitsu or giving nightly reading lessons around the dinner table.
"Any opportunity that he has to teach, he will do it," Nichole Salaam said.
Nichole is also an educator. She teaches graduate students at Bethel University. They both speak Spanish fluently and decided to make their home a Spanish-only speaking home, so all of their kids speak it fluently as well.
