Sydney Wolf – LRHS News
(LAKEWOOD RANCH, FL) – A well-known Spanish teacher is retiring from LRHS this year.
Sharyn Hundley contributed to students’ knowledge about the Spanish language and culture. She focused her lessons on how to properly form sentences, understand the meanings of words, and how to identify what a Spanish sentence is saying.
Hundley has enjoyed every moment of her five years at LRHS. Her passion for teaching the Spanish culture and language has created a wide student appreciation for it.
Hundley is retiring due to her husband’s wishes and she will take this time to hopefully travel to visit family and make use of her Spanish knowledge in other Spanish speaking countries. She may even be able to teach a little bit more.
She is also looking forward to being able to keep a clean house, gardening, reading, and participating in volunteer activities. She hopes to travel to places like Italy, Austria, Holland, and Finland.
“I wish I could continue to teach,” said Hundley. “I enjoy the students and the environment here at the Ranch. The only thing I don’t enjoy is waking up at 5 am and grading papers.”
Her most memorable times will be her students’ great sense of humor and making others laugh. She will also miss all the friendships that have been made here.
“I looked forward to every day I came in,” Hundley said. “I love when students pick up on the language and use it in an everyday setting.”
Her favorite activities in her Spanish classes are the games that help students comprehend the material.
Aside from Florida, Hundley lived in Colombia for 15 years. Once in the jungle there, serving as a missionary she and her group were almost attacked by a large tiger-like animal.
“During the night while everyone was sleeping, a large creature wandered through the doorless school that we had set up camp in,” she said. “As lightning was flashing the creature’s silhouette was seen by me and my husband. We decided to not do anything and pretend to be asleep as the beast wandered about. The following morning we saw that the paw prints in the mud floor all the way up to the edge of our hammocks and then the paws wandered off towards the exit.”
She was also caught in a riot one time. A large group of communist students were going throughout the streets throwing rocks and yelling. She followed her husband’s advice and blared on her car horn and sped through the crowd as the students quickly jumped out of her way.
She loved her 15 years in Columbia and the kind people there. Although the crime rate was very high at the time, she understands that it has improved. She also absolutely loves the climate.
While in Columbia, she did some teaching in English in a high school and elementary school. She taught Bible Studies and Home Economics to Christian missionary kids. When she returned to the states, she re-certified as an English teacher and added Spanish.
She said the difference between the education system in the US and in Columbia is that graduating from a Columbian high school is equivalent to a two-year college degree in the US.
There are no extra curricular activities in Columbia and every student is required to take Physics, Chemistry, and Trigonometry. Once they finish their high school coursework, they are required to take a standardized test. If they don’t pass, they are not allowed to graduate.
Besides teaching in Columbia, she was a hostess for the missionaries and she had the only guest house for Americans in the area. There were some years when there were about 18 people per meal. She received a lot of help from Columbian girls that knew how to cook.
She sometimes wishes that she were still in Columbia but is happy that she got that experience.