Brook Izurieta named LPMS nominee for Alabama Teacher of the Year

Brook Izurieta has been named Liberty Park Middle School’s nominee for Alabama Teacher of the Year. Izurieta has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in history and a 6th - 12th certification from Birmingham-Southern College. She also has a Master’s in ESL from UAB.

Izurieta has taught seven years at Liberty Park Middle School and one year at Chelsea Middle School. In her classroom, she tries to create an inviting, interactive and creative environment to motivate students to learn Spanish. 

 “If they are having fun and creating they are learning, which inspires them to keep going at the high school level and beyond,” she said. “I also think that with learning a language it is important to consider all types of learners and I try to incorporate activities in my lessons each day that help learners of all learning styles.”

Currently her eighth-grade students are studying the family and the house. Students will begin creating family trees to describe their family in Spanish. The students will also create a house of dreams to learn vocabulary dealing with the house.

 Her seventh grade students are learning adjectives for describing people and working on a Hispanic Heritage project. They are choosing a topic that interests them--people from a Spanish-speaking country, traditions, foods, history, places, etc. They are creating a poster or presentation and writing a paper on their topic.