Coach story: Morelba
Meet Morelba: a linguistics specialist, languages teacher and mother of two, from Venezuela.
“Teaching is not just a job for me. I feel like when you teach people and you educate people, you create a better society.”
Morelba has an illustrious background in academia. She’s got a masters degree in Teaching and Learning Modern Languages from Boston University in Massachusetts, and used to teach at Los Andes University, in Mérida. She also has a doctorate in Linguistics. Her research explored the reasons behind a characteristic of the Venezuelan accent.
After writing up her PhD, Morelba moved to Morocco to work for the British Council, to teach Spanish, English and French. She got married there and had two beautiful children. However, she had to escape an abusive relationship - and so, came to Spain as a refugee.
Whilst Morelba’s asylum claim was pending, she didn’t have the right to work. So, she volunteered with a local charity. She taught Spanish to fellow refugees from countries including Morocco, Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine.
At the same time as volunteering, Morelba became particularly close to a Moroccan woman with terminal cancer and her young family. She taught her children Spanish, helped around the house, and assisted the family with the complex bureaucracy of the asylum process. Her extraordinary generosity has set the children up for new lives in Spain.
Now, Morelba spends many of her working hours looking after her five-year-old child, who has a learning disability. She says that caring for him has deepened and enriched her perspective on teaching.
Morelba has many ambitions for the future. She has her eye on two different teaching masters degrees at the University of Seville, and hopes one day to own her own language school. She is an avid reader, and also rides a motorbike.
Around caring for her son, Morelba works as a modern language teacher, including part-time on Chatterbox. She also consults on the Chatterbox Spanish course. She's a bit of a legend here - her students absolutely love having her as a coach.
Morelba, thank you for everything you do here at Chatterbox! We're so very grateful to have you on the team. ❤️