Melissa Eaton has been teaching Spanish in private schools in Virginia and Oregon since 1996. Her experiences include middle and upper school programs at Broadwater Academy in Exmore, Virginia, middle and upper school Spanish at Sunriver Preparatory School, and now upper school Spanish at Cascades Academy. She has led several trips to Costa Rica with high school students and is thrilled to be in an educational environment that embraces travel and showing students just how wide the world is.
A native of Bend, Melissa is a graduate of Bend Senior High. During high school she studied abroad in Costa Rica with Partners of the Americas, a non-profit group that matches U.S. states with Latin American countries and promotes exchanges in all areas of student and work life. She went on to graduate in 1996 from Sweet Briar College in Virginia with a B.A. in Spanish. She participated in Sweet Briar's Junior Year Abroad program and received certificates of study at Universidad de Sevilla in Seville, Spain. At Sweet Briar she also focused on creative writing and equine studies and competed on the intercollegiate equestrian team.
Outside of school Melissa is an avid mountain biker and spent several years racing in the Oregon mountain bike series. She enjoys skiing, traveling, and hiking with her husband and three sons. Her most epic trip so far was five weeks in Latin America, during which she hiked the Inca Trail and arrived at Machu Picchu as the sun came up over the Andes. She continues to ride bikes and horses when time allows and she especially enjoys fixing "problem" horses. Melissa is founder and director of Language Institute, where she has developed programs specializing in foreign language immersion preschools in Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese.
