The United States is experiencing a shortage of teachers. Foreign language teachers, especially in Spanish, always have very good professional prospects, especially in South Texas. St. Mary's University is uniquely situated to form language teachers because of the large numbers of Hispanic students in its student population. These students already know and appreciate the cultural aspects of the Spanish language and they are ideal candidates for careers in the Foreign Language Teaching field.

In orfer to accomplish this goal, St. Mary's offers the Secondary School Certification in Spanish and French. These programs are coordinated with the Teacher Education Department, and lead to full certification to teach in the State of Texas. For more information on these Majors, please consult the Spanish and French major requirements in the University Catalog.

The Spanish and French teacher certification programs encourage students to spend a semester abroad either in Mexico,  in Spain or France.

Teaching the next generations of Students requires an excellent preparation, and the graduates of St. Mary's Department of Languages have traditionally excelled in this area, consistently passing the Texas Oral Proficiency Test administered by the state.

Furthermore, teachers certified by our programs have continued their educationn into the Master's level at UT San Antonio, Texas A&M, UT Austin, as well as at St. Mary's University graduate school. Graduates of our Teacher Certification Program are employed by the San Antonio ISD, the Southwest ISD, Harlandale ISD, Northside ISD, Houston ISD, and Catholic schools such as Providence HS.