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ABOUT ME · SOBRE MÍ · OVER MIJ
From Buenos Aires to Amsterdam From student to teacher
About me
Sobre míOver mij
ABOUT ME · SOBRE MÍ · OVER MIJ
My name is Mauricio. I was born and raised in Buenos Aires and have been living in Amsterdam since 2012.
From a very young age, I was fascinated by languages. Italian was simply part of the family background: my grandmother would speak to my grandfather in a mixture of Spanish and Italian, with Italian television often playing nearby. At some point, I realised I just understood everything that was being said on the TV... and that I could make sentences myself.
I started helping other people with languages quite early too, tutoring classmates in English and French during high school. I just didn’t think of myself as a language teacher yet.
Academic background academic background
During my final years of high school, I studied Spanish language and literature in depth, before going on to study Philosophy and Art History at the University of Buenos Aires.
After my first year, however, I moved to the Netherlands. That temporarily changed the plan: before I could continue studying, I first had to learn Dutch.
I studied Dutch intensively at Leiden University for about a year and later resumed my BA in Philosophy, this time entirely in Dutch. Along the way, I also explored Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and Gender Studies.
That academic background still influences the way I approach language. I’m interested not only in what a sentence means, but in why it is built the way it is, what changes when you formulate something differently, and how language shapes the way we organise and communicate our thoughts.
Becoming a teacher becoming a teacher
Language teaching became my profession almost by accident.
For about four years, I had been working as a manager in organic food stores in Amsterdam. Then things went south with work. I found myself between jobs and wanted a career change, but I didn’t want to be in charge of anyone. I wanted to be responsible for my work and my work only. Then a friend asked me to help him with his Spanish.
A few lessons in, something clicked. I realised how much I enjoyed teaching, but also how naturally the work suited the way my mind works: breaking complicated things into parts, finding the underlying patterns and explaining them in a way that makes sense to someone else.
My preference for individual lessons and small groups comes from my own experience as a student. Most of the languages I speak were learned through very small groups or one-to-one lessons.
Those experiences stayed with me and shaped the way I teach today: in small groups, with personalised guidance and room for questions and interaction. People don’t all learn at the same speed. In a large class, some will inevitably be waiting while others are struggling to keep up. I prefer having enough room to notice that and adjust the lesson accordingly.
Since then, teaching has grown from something I discovered almost by accident into my full-time profession. Today I work independently, teaching Dutch and Spanish to individuals and small groups.
Still a language student still a language student
I’m still learning languages myself and that inevitably shapes the way I teach.
Learning languages keeps my mind active and my creativity fresh. It keeps me connected to the experience of being a learner, and it keeps teaching me things about the process itself: its pace, its evolution, and the small breakthroughs that make the process rewarding.
Every time I’m in Greece, for example, I still find myself trying to decipher the signs I see in the street, with little more than a basic understanding of how the letters are pronounced. And it’s a great feeling when I realise I actually understand what they say.
Motivation motivation
My mission is to help language learners achieve their goals, whether they’re enthusiastic and eager to learn a new language or struggling with discipline and motivation.
Nothing is more satisfying to me than watching a student truly understand the “whats” and “whys” of the language they’re learning.
Languages are a lens through which we view the world, shaping our perceptions, broadening our horizons and influencing how we interpret experiences. Learning another language gives us access to new ways of expressing, organising and understanding the world.
My job as a teacher is to help my students get there and experience the satisfaction that comes when a language gradually stops feeling foreign and starts becoming their own.