Sabrina Ippolito

Why I created TeachUp Languages

TeachUp grew out of my experience of losing a language department and later teaching without a same-language colleague to turn to. During my first year at West Virginia University, my department was cut. Having experienced that loss, I worry about what further cuts could mean for language education and for the communities that pass teaching knowledge from one generation to the next.

After the department cuts at WVU, I founded El Rincón Hispano to help keep a Spanish-speaking cultural community alive. I had briefly been a member of Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, which collaborates with the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP). When WVU eliminated the Spanish major, new and continuing students would no longer have access to the coursework needed to meet the society’s eligibility requirements and sustain the campus chapter. El Rincón Hispano offered a welcoming space to share cultural experiences, connect with one another, and enjoy engaging, low-pressure activities. Like TeachUp, it grew from my belief that language communities need places to keep learning and connecting, even when institutional support changes.

Some student teachers and early-career educators have supervisors and colleagues who share resources, model classroom practice, and help them find their professional community. Others begin or continue their careers as the only teacher of their language in a school. I later became the only Spanish teacher at my high school, with very limited materials to rely on beyond a textbook that was about ten years old.

Monica, the school’s Italian teacher and a wonderful mentor to me, helped me connect with the Spanish and Italian teaching communities. Her guidance made a difference, but it also left me asking: What would I have done without her? And where can teachers turn when they do not have a Monica?

I created TeachUp Languages to help answer that question. My aim is to make resources for each language easier to find, bring practical classroom knowledge into one accessible space, and help educators connect with their wider teaching community. I hope it can support both teachers preparing to enter the profession and those already teaching on their own, so access to ideas and professional connections does not depend entirely on whom they happen to know.

A teacher’s perspective, across languages and borders

Learning and teaching languages have shaped both my education and my professional life. My work has taken me into classrooms in the United States and internationally, with learners of different ages, backgrounds, and goals. Italian and Spanish are central to my identity, and my own experience learning languages continues to inform how I teach.

Learning through Erasmus+

I owe much of my language development to Erasmus+ and the support of the European Union, which made it possible for me to study abroad at universities in Spain, Portugal, and Estonia. These opportunities allowed me to learn through daily life as well as university study, experience different cultures, and build connections across languages and borders. I am deeply grateful for the role this support has played in my education and in the teacher I have become.

Recent teaching experience

• West Virginia University — Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. I taught beginner and intermediate undergraduate Italian in person and online. I also worked as a historical research assistant in the History Department.
• St. Joseph Catholic Academy — Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. I taught secondary Spanish, including honors courses, provided additional support to English language learners, and undertook Italian substitute-teaching duties.
• Loyola College — Melbourne, Australia. As an Italian Language Assistant, I supported school learners, developed classroom materials, and taught Italian as a substitute. I also worked as a language assistant in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classes, where students learn a subject through an additional language, developing their subject knowledge and language skills together.
• InLanguage Boutique — Melbourne, Australia. I taught Italian and Spanish to adult learners, from beginner to advanced levels.
• Italy, Turkey, and Estonia. My international and online teaching experience includes working with learners in these countries. I also taught university students preparing to study abroad through Erasmus+, as well as students coming to Italy for their Erasmus+ year.

My approach combines communicative and task-based language teaching, comprehensible input, scaffolding, and authentic materials. I help students develop pragmatic competence and intercultural competence: interpreting social cues, understanding how context shapes meaning, and adapting their language to different audiences and situations. Through meaningful interaction, I want learners to use language confidently, recognize different cultural perspectives, and communicate with awareness of both what they say and how it may be understood.

Selected teaching work

These examples show how I translate teaching ideas into activities that invite students to create, communicate, and make choices.

Questions I want to explore

My research interests grow out of classroom experience and my own multilingual background. In second language acquisition and language education, I am particularly interested in these questions:

• Curiosity and motivation. How can teachers sustain learners’ curiosity and encourage meaningful engagement beyond a single activity?
• Input and classroom practice. How can comprehensible input, authentic materials, and scaffolded tasks support language development across different learning contexts?
• Technology and AI. When do digital tools support attention, independent thinking, and language use, and when might they distract from those goals?
• Language, culture, and identity. How do learners’ linguistic backgrounds and cultural identities shape participation, belonging, and communication?

These questions guide how I reflect on my teaching and consider the ideas and resources shared through TeachUp.

TeachUp Languages: from an idea to a working platform

Where Teachers Learn From Teachers.

I developed TeachUp’s structure, visual identity, and content as an international resource-sharing community for language educators. Teachers regularly find excellent articles, videos, tools, and classroom ideas. Yet a link alone rarely tells another teacher whether it fits their learners or how to use it well. TeachUp brings resources together with practical context: what they contain, whom they help, and ways to adapt them for teaching.

The site brings this idea into practice through resource cards, teaching ideas, lesson plans, and a Research Library. Its language collections include Spanish, Italian, ESL, French, Portuguese, Turkish, Hamshen, Chinese, and German, plus a Linguistics category, with room to grow.

What I want to develop next

My aim is to build a useful, accessible collection shaped by teachers’ needs. Future development could include gathering educators’ feedback, improving the guidance that accompanies resources, and working with research partners to understand how teachers use and adapt shared materials.

Potential support would help develop resources, strengthen accessibility, and evaluate the project’s usefulness. Specific activities, timelines, and measures of success would be defined with a funding or research partner.