Patrick Henry High School is proud to announce that World Language Department chairperson and Spanish teacher extraordinaire Mr. Edward Stanko was named as our Teacher of the Year for 2020! 

Stanko was born and raised in San Diego. From birth to 4 years of age, he spent weekdays with his grandparents while his parents were busy working; his grandparents, David and Mary Diaz, would speak to him and spend time with him in Spanish, and it was during these years that his exposure to the Spanish language and culture began. All throughout his childhood, he would be exposed on a daily basis to Spanish and English, and would experience the culture — including his favorite tradition of the tamalada — when his family would gather to make tamales, a traditional Mexican food made during the holidays. 

When Stanko was a freshman at Mt. Carmel High School, a California Distinguished School in San Diego’s North County, he began his formal study of Spanish and excelled in it all through high school. It was during his junior year of high school that he knew he wanted to teach Spanish. He majored in World Literature at UC San Diego, received his teaching credential from CSU San Marcos, and in 2018, earned his MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) from SDSU. He is currently working on his second master’s degree in Foreign Language Teaching from Michigan State University via their online program. 

Stanko’s philosophy of teaching language is simple: “As language teachers, we need to be teaching in the language, making it accessible to all students, rather than teaching about the language.” He believes in the power of comprehensible input, showing students that it is possible to understand and communicate with Spanish, and that communication is not simply a conjugation list of verbs in the different tenses. He emphasizes that language is much more than what we traditionally think of such as translating and conjugating accurately; language is culture, communication, and the ability to see the world and its peoples through another lens. 

As the World Language Department chair, Stanko has shared his teaching philosophy with the department and district through special pull out meetings. He is credited for transforming the language department from using worksheets and book work toward using real world texts, articles, songs, and short stories that carry interesting facts for the students grappling with translating the information. It has made learning language fun and interesting as students are able to respond to the new vocabulary as it’s introduced in the text. 

Mr. Stanko is admired and loved by his students because he makes learning Spanish fun and interesting every day.