LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The small collection of books in Angela Proto’s class is the first chapter of a new journey.  

“I was usually spending about $500 a year on just stocking books for my classroom,” Proto said.

The Spanish teacher taught in rural Texas for a decade before moving to Presentation Academy in Louisville. 

She also left behind the thousands of dollars’ worth of Spanish books she collected over the years. Now she’s building a library at her new school, and hopes it won’t take another decade. 

“This is a book called Orion, and it is about a rottweiler who rescued people who were caught in landslides due to severe flooding in Venezuela,” Proto said as she held up a book.

Angela Proto, a Spanish teacher at Presentation Academy, speaks English, Spanish and Japanese. She is building a classroom library with literature that explores different Spanish-speaking. (Spectrum News 1/Ashley N. Brown)

Proto started learning Spanish when she was in middle school. She quickly learned it was more than just a language. 

That’s why she incorporates books that explore Spanish-speaking countries and their culture, history and experiences in her course. 

“Some issues that our books address are natural disasters, health care, response, education, child care, and effects of government,” says Proto.

Proto set up a GoFundMe hoping to raise $5,000 to reach her vision for the library. 

Proto’s friends and family donated enough money to her fundraiser to help start the new library. 

She says a book that cost $7 a few years ago now runs about $11 not including shipping, but she believes the lessons in books like “Patricia va a California”, a book about a Guatemalan exchange student, are priceless. 

“It just points out for the rest of the world the negative stereotypes that Americans have and being insensitive to people from Latin American countries, and lumping all people together as being from one country or being of the same when actually South American and Central American countries and Mexico and the Caribbean have extremely different diverse cultures, traditions,” says Proto. 

Maneno Tambo is in Pronto’s second-level Spanish class. 

She said she appreciates the combination of learning Spanish and the different experiences of the Hispanic community.

“I feel like culture and language it makes us who we are, are at the part of who we are as humans and like it’s key to understanding other people and like being there for them and like being inclusive and like diverse and stuff like that,” says Tambo. 

Proto has a wishlist of Spanish books she hopes to add to the library. It includes books of different reading levels and those she and her students from over the years have read and enjoyed. 

“[In] the United States, we’re pretty monolingual compared to the rest of the world, and our students don’t really know or understand that,” Proto said. “Now, we can do this. We can learn another language. You can experience other cultures, other media, literature, music, movies and experience the world.”

She is proving that can be done one book at a time.