Maria is the first member of her family to graduate from college and is a fully credentialed and highly trained Spanish Immersion master teacher with over 30 years of experience teaching in public and private elementary schools. She dreamt of starting a Spanish school for years, so it was easy for her sister to inspire her to co-found the school together. She saw this as her opportunity to create an arts-integrated Spanish immersion program where children learn the academic subjects with the arts and through the arts. Her arts-integrated curriculum is differentiated to meet each child's diverse developmental stages and needs. Alumni parents often report that their students have either succeeded or surpassed the California standards for kindergarten and beyond. The high student success is because Maria uses the "Affective Filter" approach developed by Stephen Krashen (a linguistics expert) to create an environment of high learning when anxiety is low. Children learn Spanish and essential academic concepts in a fun and supportive way.