Soccer and Spanish Collide:
A Faculty Profile of
Senor Juan Arango
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Family: Married
Favorite Food: Fruit salad & carrots
Favorite Colors: “Depends on my mood, but anything bright”
Favorite Movie: “Life of Others”
Favorite Books: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: "The first book to make me cry because it was in this book that I was able to discover the meaning of friendship.” One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez" "It allowed me to learn how to interpret history through fiction."
Favorite Music: Grew up with heavy rock but now enjoy “intelligent music.”
Favorite Animal: His two Miniature Pinschers, Toby and Salome
“I was born with a soccer ball on my mind” Senor Juan Arango informed me, smiling. Arango is rounding out his second year in the DHS Foreign Language Department.
Arango has a very interesting past. Growing up in Medellin, Colombia, he was a soccer fanatic and today still remains a close follower of his favorite team, the national team of Colombia. “I would listen to the games on my radio and would cry when they started to lose,” this ardent fan said.At age 17, he came to the United States to play in the New York City League, Cali, where he was later recruited to play for Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven. He spent three years at SCSU where he completed his bachelor and master degrees. before going on to study teaching at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver where he did his doctoral studies. The academic experiences launched the next phase of his career: Juan Arango was moving off the soccer field and into the classroom.
So what made Senor Arango come to DHS? “Well I heard positive things about Darien; the new school, great technology and academically-oriented atmosphere. And since I am an academically-oriented guy I wanted to teach in this atmosphere where kids go on to top universities,” Arango said. He teaches introductory and honors-level Spanish courses including Spanish 1A, Spanish 3 Regular and Spanish 4 Honors.
While Senor Arango's intense soccer playing days may be over, Arango’s teaching career leaves him with a pretty flexible schedule that allows him to keep himself busy reading, “enjoying the pleasures of text that graduate school almost took away from him” and hiking active volcanoes on his summer sojourns. Arango’s travels include Italy, where he hiked Mt. Edna one month before its eruption; the Andes mountains in South America; the Appalachian mountains in New Hampshire and Connecticut, as well as trips to Spain and Canada. He has yet to go to the Grand Canyon, where he dreams to take off a summer to explore the vast stretches of this natural wonder.
From soccer to Spanish, Senor Arango is bringing fresh appeal to foreign language studies here at DHS.
