Maryann Najera is a kindergarten teacher at ISLA. Maryann is the oldest of 5. She was born in Spooner WI. At age 5 she and her family moved to Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico where she lived until age 17. She originally began her career studying business and obtained an Associates degree in Business Management. However, although she really liked her classes, she did not feel any sort of passion for the business world. Out of all her passions, teaching was not on the list. However, she had been teaching all her life without even realizing it and her family and friends convinced her to try the route of teaching. She went back to Mexico and helped teach at a bilingual school and absolutely fell in love with teaching. She came back and decided that teaching was definitely for her. She immediately signed up for college and now she has a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education as well as Spanish Education K-12 through Bethel University. She has found her favorite age to teach to be Kindergarten. She taught two years of kindergarten at “La ola del lago” in Prior lake, and this will be her fourth year teaching kindergarten at ISLA. Maryann got married on March 17th 2021 to her husband, Carlos Najera. He is from Chihuahua, Mexico, but has grown up in the United States. They are super excited to be expecting their first baby, Carson Najera. Maryann truly enjoys all the arts. She loves dancing, singing, playing piano and drums, she loves going to plays and creating any kind of art. She also loves exploring and traveling to different countries. She has taught herself how to speak French and loves to do anything that involves practicing or learning it more. She also loves planning any kind of anything, whether it be planning curriculum for her classroom or a party for a friend. Maryann truly loves teaching her kids not only all their academic standards and Spanish, but also teaching them to be caring, reflective, risk takers, inquirers, knowledgeable, good communicators, thinkers, principled, balanced and open minded. Her desire in life is to make her students be lifelong learners that truly love to grow.