Señor Mueller Takes On His 10th Year at HHS

The 2022-2023 school year marks Señor Mueller’s, a Spanish teacher at Hastings High, tenth year at Hastings High School.

Mueller started teaching at HHS at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year after graduating from Hastings College in the spring of 2012. Throughout his time with HHS, Mueller has taught four of the five Spanish classes offered at HHS: Spanish I, Spanish II, Spanish III, and Spanish for Native Speakers. Mueller has been teaching Spanish I and II since he started teaching at HHS, and only taught Spanish III for one year during his first year with HHS. Mueller has been teaching Spanish for Native Speakers since 2016.

“I like Spanish I. The reasons why [include]: in Spanish I the kids start knowing absolutely nothing, like zero. So to watch the growth from them going from literally knowing nothing, to at the end of the year being able to write three-paragraph biographies and send them to native speakers, to see that progression and growth and watch them have fun with it, that’s fun. I see growth in all the levels. All the levels have that, but I think you see it the most in Spanish I so that’s why it’s my favorite,” Mueller said.

Similarly to why Mueller enjoys teaching Spanish I, one thing Mueller enjoys about teaching Spanish is seeing his students grow.

“I love to see kids make growth and progress in speaking a second language, which is not easy. And so to watch the kids grow in their confidence when they learn new words or phrases, or they come up to me and say hey, I used my Spanish here or I heard this and I understood it,” Mueller said. “Just watching them growing and watching them have fun with it, watching them try to use it even if it’s, you know, filled with errors or mistakes, but just watching them kind of grow in their confidence and watching them have fun trying to use it. I think that’s the best part for sure.”

During his time with HHS so far, Mueller has also coached the boys soccer team for four seasons as an assistant coach and the head JV coach starting in the spring of 2014.

“I played in high school, and I got to know some of the soccer players around here before I had started coaching. Then I knew they were looking for an assistant coach and a head JV coach. So I wanted to spend some more time around the game since I had been away from it, but also kind of help the boys out I got to know here at Hastings High,” Mueller said.

After graduating from college, Mueller didn’t plan on staying in Hastings, but he ended up at Hastings High after being offered a teaching job at the high school.

“[I went to] Hastings College and then it wasn’t really my plan to stay in Hastings after going to Hastings College, but a job at Hastings High kind of fell into my lap while I was finishing up school.I remember the first year taking that job. I said I’ll try it for a year, and I’ve been saying I’ll try it for a year now for ten years. So one year at a time but when a job falls into your lap you take it. So that’s kind of why I stayed in Hastings after going to school,” Mueller said.

Another change of plans Mueller experienced during his time at Hastings College was what career, specifically what career involving Spanish, he wanted to go into.

“Spanish was the first thing I was decided on when I graduated high school. I took four years [in high school, and] I enjoyed it. I went to Hastings College knowing that I wanted to keep doing Spanish classes. I wanted to keep improving. I wanted to keep traveling, using [Spanish] with people in Nebraska, with people abroad, and being involved in and working to improve my Spanish was always a plan for me. The teaching part kind of came later. The teaching part maybe came in my second or third year of college after having taken multiple upper level Spanish classes at Hastings College. That’s when I kind of switched to like, ‘Hey, I think I could teach this.’ I think I can use the passion that I have for Spanish at the high school level and the college level. So it was definitely the Spanish interest came before the education interest, but the education interests follow after taking some more Spanish classes,” Mueller said.

After Mueller decided that he wanted to teach Spanish after college, he started teaching classes to Spanish-speaking adults who wanted to learn English, something that helped prepare him for teaching at the high school.

“While I was studying to become a teacher, getting certified, and going through all the classes at Hastings College, I did give night classes to adults. A lot of them were some of the parents of some of our students at the time and they were English classes. So we didn’t give like tests on Synergy and grade tests or anything, but they were like two hours a week. Different classes to adults that had varying levels of English abilities,” Mueller said. “But I kind of got my feet wet doing that, like educating someone in a second language. So even though it wasn’t quite like teaching up here, there were some similarities that I think helped prepare me for here as well.” 

One unique aspect Mueller incorporates into his classes are the trips he takes every summer to one Spanish-speaking country into his classes.

“It’s mostly for fun. I have the free time to be able to do it. That’s one of the perks of this position. Obviously I have the ability to speak Spanish, and so I use that to be able to explore places in Latin America. So while I do it for my own pleasure and my own enjoyment, I also use my experiences in Latin America in my classes. I take pictures of menus that have food words that we learn in Spanish II, or I take videos of certain vocab that we use. So it is for my own fun, but at the same time I use a lot of my experiences [at HHS],” Mueller said.

Some of Mueller’s favorite memories from traveling to Latin American countries include his time visiting 29 of the 32 states in Mexico and a trip to rural communities in the Andes mountains. 

“I’m gonna go back to the Andes Mountains in Peru… I went with Pacha Soap, and it was kind of like a soap mission trip where we gave soap to rural communities in Latin America… and I think that personifies me because I like to help other people and educate other people. We were educating children in the Andes Mountains about hygiene which is a little different than my regular job. But I enjoy, you know, teaching and educating people, and helping people in general. And then also obviously in Latin America, using my Spanish and exploring new foods and new parts of the world. Using the skills that I’ve worked on over the years, I think that will be an experience that shows what I’m about,” Mueller said.

Aside from being able to travel in the summer, another thing Mueller likes about his job is the content that he teaches.

“I think the easiest part of my job is showing up motivated about the content area. Like when I get up in the morning, I go through my morning routine. I’m excited to come to Hastings High because I get to use the language that I’ve fallen in love with. And so to be able to kind of hopefully make that contagious on the kids that I’m around all day, that’s fun for me. So that’s the easiest part. I don’t have to wake up in the morning and be like, ‘oh, I have to teach this thing or this thing or this thing,’ because it’s a language that I love. So I think the easiest part is just staying motivated and when I’m teaching,” Mueller said. 

Since students’ time in class is often some of the only time they spend learning Spanish, outside of Spanish for Native Speakers, Mueller puts a large emphasis on using the time students have in class as effectively as possible. His general philosophy is to maximize the small amount of time when students are in class  to improve their Spanish as much as possible within the time students have to work on improving their Spanish.

“In Spanish, you can always keep learning new things like new phrases, and faster and better accents. There’s always new things to learn,” Mueller said.

Throughout his career teaching at HHS, Mueller has made a lot of memories, such as an end-of-the-year soccer tournament between the languages, recording video clips of fake confessions using Spanish vocab words, and FaceTiming students from Chile while his class was reading a book in Spanish that takes place in Chile.

“My first couple of years teaching, we used to do a big soccer tournament between the languages. So the French kids would play soccer against the German kids, and the German kids would play soccer against Spanish I. That was my first or second year here, and I’d bring a bunch of little jerseys from home and we’d all put them on. And there’s an athletic tape company called Mueller, but we put like black eye tape on with my name on them because it was the company. So that was kind of a fun competitive thing at the end of the year when it was May,” Mueller said. “That’s a memory that sticks out that I had a lot of fun with, and then making those confession videos. I think it’s always a memory that’s fun for kids. Then the last thing is, it’s been a few years maybe 2015, 2016, 2017 we FaceTimed with a class in Chile. And we’re reading this novel. So every kid got to talk to a kid in Chile that asked them some questions in English and questions in Spanish and learn about the culture a little bit.”