Who We Are: Professors

Joseph

Joe grew up in a land far from the lures of Latin America: Wisconsin. Yet, in his sophomore year of high school, in an attempt to discover what lied outside of the city of beer and Laverne and Shirley, he got an afterschool job at Hardees and peddled fried chicken until his bank account let him go to Mexico.  There, in the Zócalo of DF, he was hooked.  He uttered his first Spanish words in a restaurant - ¿Tienes mantequilla? – and knew that español would always play a part in his life.  (Grammatical note: Joe later went on to chastise himself for using the informal conjugation of the verb instead of the more appropriate usted form.)

Since then, he has found himself somewhere Spanish speaking every year: living in Argentina and Chile, lazing about in Uruguay, eating himself silly in Spain, and tanning and ziplining in Nicaragua.  Along the way, he graduated with degrees in Spanish, International Studies, Secondary Education, and Education Policy.  In other words, if you like to geek out and talk (in Spanish, of course) about charter schools and the state of public education, Joe’s your guy.

When not at FluentBrooklyn or sitting at his apartment planning his next trip, you can find Joe at Uncommon Charter High School where he is a Spanish teacher and the Coordinator of Student Life.

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