ESTADIO / LAURELES TEAM
MANILA / EL POBLADO TEAM
MEET OUR TEAM!
Meet our team of amazing Spanish teachers, English teachers, and professionals! We are all very happy to make your acquaintance and are here to help you improve your Spanish, or English, fluency. Our focus is to help our students gain more than just a foreign language certificate. The cornerstone of our curriculums is to equip our students with the ability to actually speak the language they are learning. In a world where many educational programs are theory-based, we stand apart teaching language theory AND putting it into practice for a more complete experience. Just ask us!!
Shane Keeley
Director OLSA International
Jenny Contreras Romero
Director Estadio Campus
Elías Ferreira Medina
Director Manila Campus
Francisco Márquez Romero
Publicity
Sara Julieth Gallego
Spanish Coordinator Estadio
Giovanny Vargas
Spanish Coordinator Manila
Sarah Jennings
English Coordinator
Samantha Jacobs
Events Coordinator
Luisa Gonzalez
Reception Estadio Campus
Paola Taborda
Reception Estadio Campus
Maria José Ceballos Tamayo
Reception Manila Campus
Laura Donado
Reception Manila Campus
OLSA MISSION
We are an immersion Academy for the Spanish and English languages committed to conversational, cultural and grammatical education. In addition, OLSA International is certified through the Ministry of Education of Colombia for Spanish. Our certified courses qualify for the Colombian student visa. Our mission is to provide practical Spanish skills to students, professionals, businessmen and travelers to improve their marketability internationally. Knowing that language acquisition is experiencial, coming from cooperative discovery and challenging topics, our curriculum design and instructional practices encourage students to discover new concepts, learn about them, and apply that knowledge to achieve a bright future.
OLSA VISION
Our vision is to be recognized as a leading international academy in education through immersion in the Spanish and English languages. Secondly, upon expansion to several Colombian cities, expand to additional countries in central and south America. Thirdly, through the success of our students and the public in general, be recognized for our quality and innovation in education.
OLSA QUALITY POLICY
OLSA Academia de idiomas S.A.S. is an institution for work and human development and is committed to:
1. To strategically direct the organization to ensure compliance with applicable requirements through a management model.
2. To design and develop Spanish and English language curriculum to improve the theoretical and practical skills of our students and the general public.
3. To adequately manage resources for the provision of quality service and continuous improvement of the educational and management systems and the organization as a whole.
OLSA International is the top-rated Spanish academy in Medellin, Colombia according to Google Reviews. Our focus as and academy is to provide more than just Spanish / English grammar (theory). At OLSA, in addition to language theory, we actually put language into practice. Our students learn to actually speak Spanish / English, instead of just knowing the grammar rules. This is very important as the majority of people don’t learn a language just to be able to read it, or type it out on a screen. Most people want to actually speak the language with natives and people from other countries. It’s about connecting with people through language.
OLSA International provides several ways to for people to learn to speak language.
1. OLSA’s conversation classes focus on actually speaking Spanish / English. We accomplish this by hiring native speakers and providing language modeling and correction through a variety of activities including prepared conversations, impromptu conversations, games, activities, songs and anything else we can think of to create student interaction in oral conversation. This is called, Active Learning, and is the best form of learning language for improving language fluency. (Filling out worksheets is considered Passive Learning and is good for acquiring knowledge).
2. OLSA hosts a nightly language exchange (weekdays) starting at 6pm and extending to approximately 8:30pm, or 9:00pm – Fridays until 11:00pm. These language exchanges are different every night and are different from other school and restaurant language exchanges. Other schools and restaurants provide a space for people to come in and meet each other, but provide no method for actually getting past “tourist introduction conversation”. At OLSA events, everything revolves around conversation. We want our students interacting.
For this reason, on Mondays, we host Board Game Night. On Tuesdays we host Speed Chatting – a game we invented! On Wednesdays our English teachers present Activity Night. On Thursdays we host a Craft Night. And, on Fridays, we host the Pre-Party event which helps locals and foreigners come together in conversation, games and activities as they become friends. At 11pm, the group goes as a whole to the “Party Streets (the 70, or the 10). This provides protection for our foreign participants and additional English practice for our local participants. It’s a great time and the participants learn language without even studying!
At OLSA International, it’s not just a Spanish academy, it’s a Colombian experience.
