Boston Area Spanish Exchange, BASE, is a teacher-founded and teacher-run Spanish school. We are bilinguals, linguists and experienced Spanish teachers passionate about languages, teaching and learning. Boston is an exciting place, particularly culturally and linguistically, so we are pleased to present BASE to you in your search for Spanish language acquisition, and in our effort to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps in the Boston area and beyond.

Lorena Calderón obtained a degree in International Relations and embodies the spirit all language teachers and learners desire. Lorena passionately shares her mother tongue with Spanish language learners. As BASE Co-director she works closely with Boston's Spanish-language-reltated cultural network, as well as with BASE Spanish instructors. In addition to other responsibilities Lorena seeks out and builds relationships with Spanish schools and organizations, locally, nationally and abroad, that are of interest to BASE Spanish students. Miles upon miles may separate them; Colombia is still close to Lorena. Lorena's efforts often lead her to educating the US public on Colombian and US-Colombian issues. Lorena is a natural photographer as well. Lorena's talent with images and languages will combine to create future top-notch podcasts. Stay tuned.

Bill Spirito, BASE's "grammar guru", has a degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies, studied and researched in Colombia over his six years there as a student, traveler, language teacher and entrepreneur; his present studies include French and Arabic language studies, and research in Colombian-U.S. relations, Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. In addition to his teaching, marketing, administrative, web management and outreach responsibilities at BASE, Bill has contributed to urban and private education in the Boston area.

BASE teachers are native speakers and/or bilinguals who most importantly share a passion for languages as we do and the sincere desire to bridge gaps here in the Boston area through language instruction. Our Spanish teachers will neither be selected solely for their academic background nor solely for their engaging spirit essential for language teaching; both of these aspects are weighed in the selection process, and additional training will be provided to our teachers for the specific needs of our students.