Opening the door to adventure

Meredith Hand is a Dal grad who now lives, works and studies in Spain. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

When Meredith Hand arrived at Dalhousie, her knowledge of Spanish didn’t extend much beyond ¡hola! But a high school band trip to Cuba piqued her interest and she signed up for a beginners class.

“I fell in love with the language by learning it from scratch,” she enthuses. “And then going to Salamanca (in Spain) made me love it all the more.”

(The Department of Spanish & Latin American Studies offers study-abroad programs in Mexico, Cuba and Spain. The Salamanca program allows Dalhousie students to study Spanish and learn about Spanish culture at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain.)

Ms. Hand, who graduated from Dalhousie in 2005 in a BA combined honours Spanish and Linguistics, has been living in Madrid for the past two years. She works as the director of recruitment for BEDA (Bilingual English Development and Assessment), a program of the Catholic school board in Spain, and is working on her MBA in Sports Management with Real Madrid, one of the most storied soccer clubs in all of Europe.

Ms. Hand recently returned to her alma mater to recruit native English speakers who want to live and teach in Spain through the BEDA Program. Dal students and alumni are already well represented in the program, which places language and culture assistants in close to 300 elementary and high schools throughout three Spanish provinces. There are currently 31 Dal students working in the BEDA program, with even more expected to come on board next year.

“Everybody wants to learn English because the Spanish realize they don’t have the level of English that people from other European countries do,” she explained at an information session held last week on campus. “The program has really taken off in the past four years.”

As well as meeting potential recruits, Ms. Hand met with Dal officials to facilitate a co-op program that would see Dalhousie co-op students working in the BEDA program and living in Spain.

Interested in learning more about the BEDA program? Visit the Facebook page or check out the website for Escuelas Catolicas Madrid and hit the “Programa BEDA” button. You can also e-mail Meredith Hand at meredith@ferececa.es.