Our Team

Joanne Wallington is a Lango Leader, attorney and mother of two Lango students.  As a mother, Joanne is always looking for ways to increase the quality of education for children from all walks of life.  As such, she believes Lango is an ideal supplement to any preschool and/or elementary school curriculum.

As the Lango Leader in Prince George's County, her mission is to bring high quality classes to parents and students in convenient locations througout the week.  What truly makes these classes successful though is Lango's devoted and tireless teachers.

Lango's teachers make our classes truly exceptional.  In our selection process, we look for five distinct qualities:  native/bilingual fluency, limitless positive energy, creativity, teaching experience with relevant age groups and outstanding communication skills with both children and their parents.  Beyond these qualities, though, our teachers bring unique cultural perspectives and professional backgrounds that enable them to create rich, engaging experiences in the classroom.  If you are interested in becoming a Lango teacher, please contact us today.

Lucrecia Darling is a Spanish teacher with Lango.  Lucrecia was born in Venezuela, where she attended high school and began college.  She moved to the US in 1976 to complete her education. Lucrecia has a master's degree in education and many years of teaching experience.  She has taken several classes in language training, and has been teaching Spanish for seven years.  Lucrecia is very excited about the Lango curriculum because it offers total language immersion through play, which is a formula for success.  

 

 

 

Yarim Heureaux is a Spanish teacher and Camp Counselor with Lango of Prince George's County. She is a native Spanish speaker from the Dominican Republic.  As a child, Yarim struggled through her first two years in elementary school not understanding the English language. During a child’s early years they grasp things fairly quickly but the ride isn’t always easy. Having to experience the discomfort and the frustration of learning a language later in life, she is a strong believer in exposing children to a new language at an early age. With the rise of the Hispanic population she believes that learning another language not only benefits the child’s future but would come in handy if a child encounters another child that does not speak English as their first language.

Yarim is in the progress of earning her Bachelor’s degree in Early Education and Special Needs.  She taught the Pre-K class at It's a Family Affair at Morgan Blvd, a Lango of Prince George's County Model School of Excellence, for two years where she led a Spanish/English bilingual class.  

She is a regional trainer for new Lango licensees and teachers on the east coast, and she is our lead teacher for Camp Lango.

Paola Apolinares is a French/Spanish teacher and Camp Counselor with Lango of Prince George’s County. Paola worked at “L’Alliance française,” the most important French language school around the world for 5 years, before moving to the U.S from her native Peru. In addition to being a native Spanish speaker, she is fluent in English French and is studying Japanese.

She found out her passion for foreign languages when she was a school student. She studied at an English full immersion school in Lima, Peru. As many students, she needed extra classes to accomplish the school requirements, so her mother enrolled her in a language school. Three years later, she got her diploma of English Instructor at the age of 15! She found out her vocation as a teacher, and started to work as an English teacher during the summer, sometimes with kids of her same age, until she graduated school.
She studied French at “L’Alliance française” while she was in a computer school. Paola took a special course for French teachers there. Due to her superb performance, L’Alliance française offered her a French teacher position in one of its centers.
Paola received DELF/DALF diplomas, a set of official French proficiency tests administered by the Centre international d'étude pédagogiques, that certify her proficiency as a fluent French speaker. Thanks to her experience at “L’Alliance française,” she was able to work with different public: professionals, school students, and children, showing on every occasion her skills as a teacher.
As a multilingual person, she recognizes the importance of learning a foreign language especially in an early age. She believes that speaking one or two different foreign languages give the student the possibility to get more achievements in his/her future professional life.

Erica Plummer is a Spanish Camp Counselor with Lango. She enjoys teaching and is currently an elementary school teacher in Baltimore City where she's taught first and second grades. Erica began learning Spanish in middle school. She went on to minor in Spanish in college. While in college, she studied abroad in Madrid, Spain. Erica earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology at Xavier University of Louisiana and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in education. She believes that it has become increasingly necessary to speak a foreign language, and that the easiest time to acquire one is at an early age.

 

 

 

Meet the Lango Corporate Staff

Lango is headquartered in San Francisco, California where the concept of Lango was born and the curriculum perfected. Lango's first language focus was Spanish but has since branched out to include Mandarin and French. Meet the San Francisco team!

Michael Fee, Lango's Managing Director, has spent his entire career in education, starting as a high school English Teacher with Teach For America in rural Arkansas. Since then, he has held various leadership positions, including running after-school tutoring centers for Score Educational Centers and leading Intrax Cultural Exchange's study abroad and English-instruction businesses. He also earned his BA from Stanford and his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Most proudly, he is father to three children, all of whom are learning Spanish at Lango!

 

 

Brigette Iarrusso, Lango's Director of Curriculum and Training learned Spanish from her Puerto Rican grandmother while growing up in New York City. She has designed programs for Catholic Relief Services, the United Nations Association, USAID and the New York City Department of Education. Brigette's work has taken her to Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and Peru where she worked with young children, community leaders, teachers and local government officials. Brigette holds a BA in Political Science and a Masters degree in Public Administration from Columbia University. She is committed to teaching all young children a second language as the key to bridging the divide between people of all backgrounds.