When Senior Mercedes Paulino walks into her Spanish class this year, she doesn’t sit with the rest of the students. While the freshman in the room take out their notebooks and talk amongst themselves about the homework last night, she confers with the teacher on the lesson plan, and walks over to the other students, asking if any of them need help with anything. That’s because Paulino isn’t a student in the class, she’s a teaching assistant, and is helping teach the class of impressionable freshmen.

Being a student aide in a Spanish class is both empowering and satisfying for native speakers.

This semester, Spanish teacher Lindsay Davis has welcomed two native Spanish speakers into her classroom as teaching assistants.  According to Davis, this is proving beneficial to everyone involved.

According to Paulino, who is from the Dominican Republic, it’s a really great experience to be able to bring her culture into the classroom.

“We’re talking about Dominican instruments right now, and Dominican culture, el folklorico, el merengue and stuff like that,” Paulino said. “That’s something I grew up with my whole entire life. That’s the culture that I grew up with.”

According to Davis, it is amazing to have other cultures in the classroom because although she has studied in Spain and Costa Rica, she has no experience with the Dominican Republic.

“She’s bringing this whole other set of culture and language that the kids would never hear,” Davis said. “I have nothing to offer kids in terms of that, when I’m there, so it’s like this whole other lens.”

Paulino stated that when a student is struggling to learn Spanish, she can relate to them because when she moved to the United States in 7th grade, she didn’t know any English.

“I know what it’s like to not know a language, I know what it’s like to learn a new language,” Paulino said. “I can relate to how they feel when I say something in Spanish and they have no idea what I’m saying.”

Freshman Ben Nigrovic is a student in Davis’ C-block class, where Paulino is a teaching assistant.

“She’s really helpful,” Nigrovic said. “If you have any questions about really complicated things you can just ask her.”

Paulino said that helping people learn her language feels really good, and that she definitely recommends talking to Davis if anyone is interested.

“Finding people that I can help because of the fact that I speak another language makes me feel so proud of who I am,” Paulino said. “It’s rewarding, helping other people, especially students, when I’m a student myself.”

Nigrovic agrees that having Paulino in class is really helpful and thinks that it would be something he would recommend.

“I think it would be pretty useful in most classes,” Nigrovic said. “Definitely world language and maybe even other classes outside of language.”

Davis feels that the program is a great way for international students to feel proud of their language skills, and to highlight it. She encourages anyone who is interested to reach out to her.

“I just want more students who speak Spanish as their first language to feel as if they have this amazing thing to offer,” Davis said. “And for more people to accept it and let that shine.”