Ever since Spanish teacher and Superior alumni Allison Conley learned her first Spanish words, she found herself to be a natural and immediately fell in love with the language.
While in college, the Spanish department gave her the chance to go on an 11 day trip to Mexico. Without a second thought, she took the chance. She wanted to see how far her prowess could take her in an authentic setting with a Spanish speaking host family.
During the trip, Conley grew her love for the language as well as the culture and history. This journey solidified her passion for Spanish and pushed her in the direction of teaching.
Conley wanted to use her bilingual ability in order to teach because she felt she could impart some of her passion on children.
“I love being able to speak Spanish with students and seeing that lightbulb moment go off in their eyes. When they are experiencing the incomprehensible input, it’ll take understanding and comprehension to produce the language,” Conley said.
She has not always taught high school. In Jan. of 2000, just nine days after she graduated college, she was hired to teach kindergarten through fifth grade Spanish and reading, and taught Spanish for two years. Later she went to Superior Middle School and taught Spanish for four years. Now she has been teaching Spanish at Superior High School for the past 18 years.
Conley is known for her classroom which is filled with fun decorations and bright colors, but it has not always been this way.
“The idea of how to decorate my own classroom actually came to me in the dead of winter. I looked around my classroom and, yes, I had some posters up. Maybe I had a few things, but mainly the walls were white, just like the snow that I was tired of looking at. I just wanted to make it a bright and calming learning environment for students,” Conley said.
Outside of work, Conley loves going swimming, arranging flowers, hiking, and spending time on her pontoon. She is also a mother of five and a few months ago she added a new addition to her family named Herbie: a seven month old Shih Tzu. Conley is also passionate about the recognition of Spanish heritage month.
“We celebrate hispanic heritage month and it celebrates contributions made by hispanics to our culture and it just promotes cultural awareness,” Conley stated.
Conley’s love for Spanish is so strong that she kept her passion even through tragedy. After her son’s passing in 2015, the Four Corners Elementary School community helped her and her family through their grieving by bringing groceries, gifts and dinner.
She wants to give back to the Four Corners community this year. She plans on doing this by giving a scholarship to a graduating senior who attended Four Corners Elementary this year. The scholarship will be $4,000 for a student who will be pursuing any kind of post secondary education.
For every year that one of her children graduate after, the Conley family will be giving away a $500 scholarship. These years will be 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2031.
“Always try your best, find something to be grateful for every day and keep on smiling,” Conley said.
Conley has the gift for taking something terrible and using it to spread positivity to those around her.
