About Me

My name is Natalia Benjamin. I was born and raised in Guatemala and I am a native Spanish speaker. I also grew up speaking, reading, and writing French while attending a French school in Guatemala City. Later, I learned English in middle school and high school. The diverse exposure to and fluency in different languages has prepared me to better understand a child’s language acquisition process. 

I earned a B.S. in Molecular Biology from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1999, and an M.A. in Language Acquisition and Teaching from BYU in 2007. I was an assistant preschool teacher for two years at Teaching World in Nampa, Idaho. I  also successfully co-created, organized, and taught at the Skit Skat Doodle Dat Summer Camp in Caldwell, Idaho. With over 5 years of experience teaching children, I believe in the value of early language learning.

In 2005, I teamed with my husband, Michael, to start Discovering Language in Caldwell, Idaho. Our goal was to provide foreign language classes for preschoolers and elementary age children, as such classes are not offered in the mainstream education. During this time, I  created curriculum, trained other teachers, set up the classrooms and taught children in both Spanish and French. In addition to teaching with my own business, Discovering Languages, I have volunteered at the Lakevue elementary helping ESL students with their language development. I also taught an elective fifth grade Spanish class for students who were interested in learning the language.  Middle school, High School student and adults were also part of my students when they asked for private classes and tutoring.

In 2009, I joined the YMCA to help teach swim classes in the Make-a-splash grant to teach third graders from the Caldwell School district.  Since then I have taught both preschool and regular swim classes at the Caldwell YMCA and the grant for two years in a row.

I believe that education is a door that opens opportunities and that children should be given such opportunities. Because of my desire to continually challenge my own children and provide other children with learning opportunities, I have volunteered in numerous community events including literacy nights, Children’s Story time at the library, Science camps, Community and Library fairs, and school events.

I attended a French school from 3 yrs old to 17 yrs old. All classes were taught in French except language classes such as Spanish, and English. As a student I wrote dissertations for History, Philosophy, and French as well as compositions. I also did a number of oral presentations as part of our assessments. I learned the French language through immersion and received a high school French degree with "mention bien" at the completion of my schooling. I was accepted to a French university in Paris where I would have continued my college education, however, my parents encouraged me to stay in America and thus attended college in the United States. During my master's degree, I took an oral proficiency examination in French to assess my French fluency and I received an advanced mid score proving my ability to communicate fluently in the language. During my master's degree I took classes in language acquisition, teaching methodologies, research, data analysis, curriculum planning and implementations and French classes that have prepared me to teach French and Spanish to children.