Welcome to Tierra Educational Center!

Thank you for your visit! We appreciate your interest and we hope we have the opportunity to show you the variety of Spanish learning options that we have to offer. Here at Tierra we come from the foundation that language education encompasses a set of distinct characteristics and strategies, different than the ones usually applied in other education areas. Unfortunately there are still many schools that teach languages the same way they teach accounting or economics. Although everyday there are new approaches and educational methods being researched and developed that could apply to many different subject areas and student demographics, language education is unique in the sense that nature and human evolution have already shown us the best way to teach a language: warm human interaction.

This is precisely one of our goals here at Tierra --to provide the students with a warm, friendly, and motivational environment where they can interact freely with their peers and teachers to master the Spanish language without frustration. But how can positive human interaction arise without a specific purpose or an inspirational idea, to give us the chance to communicate, think, and create? This is where Culture comes into place. In fact, language is one of the main foundations of culture, so how could we teach a language without teaching about the culture that it generated? That's why at Tierra we have designed a set of strategies that will immerse our students in the culture of Latin America, providing them with the applicational tools to interact beautifully with the Spanish language.

In addition to our Spanish language programs we offer ESL (English as a Second Language) classes and are developing a curriculum for Computer classes in Spanish. Our members come from the strong belief that in these times it is urgently required to work in new ways to enhance communication between different communities and cultures. We know that we are not alone in this mission to develop a better world for future generations. Therefore, we are confident that we will gather the necessary synergy from our students and the community to manifest our desired world.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely

The Tierra Team

Norberto T. Medina

Academic and IT Director

Norberto was born in Seattle, WA but raised in México City. He came to Portland to seek professional development and to study the classical guitar. He soon fell in love with this city and realized that he wanted to establish his home here.

Norberto has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM). He envisions Tierra Educational Center as a multidisciplinary environment where languages, culture and technology can fusion to effectively provide students with the knowledge and tools to experience personal growth and improved interaction with their respective communities.

He has always had a passion for teaching and languages. He has done research on information retrieval algorithms and as a thesis project built a prototype to index and dissect Web documents in Spanish by the concepts in their content. At the final stage of completing his degrees he started working as a research assistant at the Multimedia Laboratory of the Center for Computer Research (CIC-IPN) in México City. He stayed there over 3 years participating actively in several private and government financed computer system projects. Later, he decided to work for himself as a freelance consultant and software developer.

He was part of the leading team that designed and implemented the main information system for distribution and retrieval of meteorological data from all Mexican territory. The project was financed by the World Meteorological Organization part of the United Nations. The public interface of this system, which has been in use over five years, can be visited here: http://smn.cna.gob.mx/

Currently he is busy serving as the Academic and IT director and teaching Spanish classes at Tierra, working on software development and website application projects in Portland, and studying the classical guitar.

His main professional research and work area interests are: multimedia educational tools, custom Internet applications, content management systems and any type of information systems.

Norberto's other interests are classical and Latin American music, ancient Mexican culture, writing, mountaineering, camping, biking, and microbreweries.

Rebecca A. Pillsbury

Administrative and Outreach Director

Rebecca Pillsbury grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Communication Studies and a minor in German. After graduation, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to fulfill a dream of working in the music industry. After three years in the business, she felt drawn to a more progressive and green environment, and moved herself to Portland—where she is blissfully happy trampling nymph-like through Forest Park, the Gorge, and her favorite sanctuary—the Oregon coast. When not among nature (or scheduling students), she can be found working concerts at the Aladdin Theater, walking dogs, vegetable gardening, or swing/tango/blues dancing around the city (or her living room).

Rebecca’s experience in the field stems from two years working in Program Coordination for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and working at two different Portland language schools as an ESL teacher and as an Executive Assistant. Her language study experiences include several years of studying German in the US and in Vienna, Austria, as well as five months studying Spanish in Buenos Aires, Argentina over the past two years.