Sarah Champ began teaching at Waterford High School in 2022. She teaches Spanish 1 and 2 advanced and standard, as well as Spanish 4 advanced here at Waterford High in room 209.
Ms. Champ grew up in Vernon, Connecticut. She didn’t care much for school then. She had flunked Spanish and was a B and C student. Ms. Champ had hated Spanish in high school. She was more of an artistic child and liked the art classes best. She only started to like Spanish when she went to live in Mexico.
Ms. Champ attended Simmons University up in Boston. The university was an all-women’s college. She studied Philosophy, Women’s Studies, and Gender/Cultural Studies.
The first signs of her teaching can go all the way back to her years attending Simmons University. There, she presented for multiple conferences about gender and cultural history and the deep history behind each subject. She didn’t know then that she wanted to be a teacher, but it is the first moment where anyone could see her ability to teach people.
After college she traveled around the world to over 10 countries, including Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, and England. When traveling in Mexico, she met her ex-husband and settled there for eight years.
Ms. Champ discovered teaching when she went to Mexico. She had two young children at the time and needed a job with health care benefits. She knew she could speak Spanish fluently, so she took the certification program and got her teaching license. She has been teaching for almost 22 years–13 years in the states and 8 years in Mexico.
Ms. Champ says that she loves Waterford and loves the students. She likes working with people who have an understanding of what they want and how the school should be in general. Her colleagues also like and respect Ms. Champ as a person and teacher. Ms. Marchese, fellow teacher in the Language Wing, said “Ms. Champ is a fantastic addition to the Waterford High School faculty and the World Language department. She makes everybody feel comfortable where they are and she’s very welcoming of anyone in her classroom and is a bright, cheery, and sunshiny person.” Mr. Ash says that she’s a student favorite.
Ms. Champ is always learning and understands how difficult it can be to learn the material. Arissa Moore, a current student of Ms. Champ’s Spanish two advanced class, says that she likes how Ms. Champ always finds a way to adapt her teaching style for each student.
In her free time, Ms. Champ likes to play her viola, travel, and learn French. The thing she loves most is going to the beach alone and floating on the water.
Lately, though, she’s been studying for her TESOL–Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages–license. With this license, she will be able to teach English to students who come here not knowing how to speak in English.
Students from all grades are welcome into Ms. Champ’s classroom at any time. In the mornings of every day of the week, her room is packed with students who choose to spend their free time waiting for classes to begin in her classroom. All students who have had Ms. Champ know that you don’t have to keep up the student-teacher professional relationship as her Spanish two student John Donnelly explains, “Met a lot of people in the education system, but there’s a few remarkable people that are of note in my book, Ms. Champ being one of them. She’s very down to earth and there’s not that professional gap that stops you from actually opening up to her, because you can tell she genuinely cares and has a meaningful and loving soul.”
