Teaching Spanish to a classroom of eighth graders, Jenny Urbain walks rapidly around the room, exhorting them to shout out adjectives. “Super rapidísimo!” she says with a smile. Urbain not only has been teaching Spanish at Charlotte Latin School since the dawn of the millennium, she has two children at the school (a fifth grader and a seventh grader) and she was a Latin student herself. By her classroom door, there’s a couple of Spanish-language posters: one is an artifact of her time living in Seville, Spain, with the protest slogan “La Tortua No Es Arte Ni Cultura.” The other comes from closer to home, with a message fitting for a lifelong Hawk: “El Honor Ante Todo,” or “Honor Above All.”

When you were a student at Charlotte Latin, did you ever imagine you would return as a teacher?

Never. I arrived as a sixth grader, and I was going through 11-year-old things, and Charlotte Latin was challenging. I loved the teachers: Rudene Marlow taught me tenth-grade math. She was the first person who I ever felt comfortable getting extra help from, and she opened up my world. I was a nervous kid — I was very quiet and shy. Nobody can believe that now!

How did you go from being meek to your current brash self?

I can tell you exactly when that happened. The summer before my senior year, I went on an Outward Bound trip. You got in a van somewhere near Davidson College with 30 other kids that you didn’t know. Three vans, 23 days out west. We saw the Grand Canyon, we went to Las Vegas, we visited Bryce Canyon National Park. Back then, you didn’t have cell phones, so we would pull up and they’d say, ‘Okay, be back in three hours.’ And we would go and explore.

We camped out every night. Putting up the tent took forever, so we just put our sleeping bags out and went to sleep. We showered when we could. And that’s when I decided, Why am I so quiet and don’t speak up? I didn’t know who I was until I went on that trip — I learned that I have a voice too. And I want that for my children, to know that you can go camping across the country and you’re going to be safe and you’re going to have fun and you’ll be able to take care of yourself.

So when you have kids in your class who are quiet the way that you were, how do you handle that?

With middle schoolers, it can be hard to know: is this child really an introvert or are they going to find themselves and become who they need to be? But I find ways to talk with them, whether it’s in Spanish or English. The other day one of my students had a great football play, and even though I wasn’t there, I heard about it and I asked about it. We do silly things in class. My eighth-grade class knows that on Friday we do Zumba as our warmup. The kids last year hated it at first, but by January, they were asking “Are we going to dance tomorrow?” They start feeling comfortable in class. You see these kids who might be introverted, and I’m trying to get them to speak in another language, which can be torture for some kids. But they do it, and they come out of their shells a little bit.

How did you become a teacher?

My whole life, I was interested in other languages. Sign language was fascinating to me. I didn’t think I would be a teacher — I went to Clemson to become a physical therapist — but in college, I had friends who would skip class. I wouldn’t, and then I would teach them the material. And then guess who did better on the test? They did! I taught well, but I wasn’t a great test-taker. I switched my major to education.

How did you end up back at Latin?

I graduated from Clemson and started teaching Spanish at Butler High School. My sister was a senior here at Latin, so I came to see one of her choir concerts — she has a fantastic voice. I ran into a bunch of my former teachers, one of whom was Mary Lou Lewis. I was scared of her as a kid, because she did not let people mess around in her class, but now I was speaking to her as an adult. She put my name in for a Spanish position at the Middle School and I was like, “Ugh, I teach high school.” But out of respect for her, I interviewed and I watched Hunter Murphy teach a class. And Hunter Murphy was teaching more Spanish to sixth graders than I was able to teach my seniors. They offered me the position two or three days later, and I thought I would be stupid not to take this. 

I started in August 2000: this is my 25th year. The school keeps growing, but these kids are just fantastic. They’re the hardest-working kids in the southeast. They leave your classroom and say “thank you.” This is the greatest place for your children to learn — and it’s also the greatest place to work as a teacher. I clearly don’t want to be anywhere else.

How are you a better teacher now than when you started?

Because of being able to observe the other teachers here at Charlotte Latin. The Middle School is a special place — we’re always collaborating. Latin gave me so many professional development opportunities. It made me the teacher that I am; it made me who I am as a person.

What do you do for fun?

I’m a fantastic Uber driver for my children. I relax by cooking and baking. I love to go swimming, and I walk my three dogs. As my kids get older, I’d like to take some dance classes. And I’d love to travel more — I want to go to Greece, and I want to take my kids to an immersion program in Spain. I want to travel to France and see where my husband’s family is from. We’ve been married for 15 years and we have not been to France — we can be like the Griswolds [in National Lampoon’s Vacation] and just knock on the door.

How has the teaching of foreign languages changed during your career?

The way we used to learn a language was Here’s your vocab list. Here’s a verb, make a verb chart. Memorize, memorize, memorize. And now it’s exposure, exposure, exposure. If you ever wonder why I’m so tired at the end of the day, it’s because I’m always acting things out, or I’m pointing to words, or I’m explaining something with the words that the students understand. 

A lot of students have a hard time with language, and they’re so used to being on a device, so they ask, “What’s the point? I can just get an app and it’ll translate for me.” I encourage them to think about what knowing another language does: the places you can go, the businesses you can be in, the people you can meet. You’re opening up such a bigger world for yourself.