“The actual teaching is my favorite part where I get to interact with the students. Like that’s a lot of fun for me,” said Señor Mark Alberda.
Señor Alberda is a Spanish Teacher here at Landstown High School, and when he isn’t educating the students of Landstown about Spanish, Alberda is mostly with his wife and two kids going to concerts, the zoo or the beach.
While discussing his family’s influence on his values, Alberda highlighted how religion was central to his life as a child.
“We went to church every Sunday and then we did activities related to that. So that was really important in our upbringing because it was so much of what we did.”
He continued to explain the values of hard work and responsibility that were instilled in him when he was young: “Those things that have paid off now as an adult, where I can take care of my home and be responsible in nature.”
When asked about the challenges he faced and how he overcame them, Alberda says, “I think I’ve been really fortunate. I was always a good student and I always had good support from my family and my teachers and all of that.”
But as he went on, he described one challenge.,
“I think the biggest challenge really is just maintaining a busy schedule, wanting to do everything and do it well. Eventually, you run up against a roadblock where you don’t have enough time to do everything that you want to do and do it right.”
Along with the challenges, he was asked why he wanted to purue this career.
“The first answer would be, just a love for the language and wanting to share that with people,” Alberda says. “I think nowadays, it’s more of a responsibility to try to teach others about cultures that might be different than theirs and to expose them to a world that is maybe not something that they’re familiar with.”
“I still have the same passion and desire to teach a language. Have others than that too, but it’s more about getting people exposure to something that’s totally different than what they’re familiar with.”
Senior Shaylen Boaz, a former student who also played for Alberda when he was the coach of the Landstown Girls Tennis team, gave helpful insight about Señor Alberda and his ability to connect with his students.
“He is such a supportive person, which I know a lot of people appreciate because it makes it easier for students to connect with him, and as a teacher, I don’t really know what you could do to be better than him,” Boaz explains.
Another former student, senior Jasmine Estrada, who took three classes with Alberda, described her positive experiences in Alberda’s class as well.
“Señor Alberda impacted my life for the better. Not only did I learn Spanish from the best teacher, but he encouraged me to the best of my ability, even if I’m no longer his student.”
Although Boaz and Estrada described their experiences with Alberda differently, both students used a single word to describe his personality: “Passionate.”
“He is truly passionate about teaching kids that they can understand a language even when it’s hard or teaching in general,” Estrada says.
Even in his 16th year of teaching, Señor Alberda is focused on refining his work and becoming a better teacher every day, he says, specifically for his students.
“I’m always trying to refine the work that I do and do it better, to make it more applicable to my students, to give them a more well-rounded lesson, to reach more students so that they’re feeling included and that they’re seen and heard in the classroom.”
