My name is Leslie Decker . I am a native speaker of English, as well as a fluent speaker of German and Dutch.

       I was born in Austin, Texas and grew up nearby in the towns of Hutto and Bastrop. From 1994-1998, I attended the University of Texas at Austin, and graduated with a double-major in German and linguistics, with minors in English and Dutch. During my time at the University, I also studied abroad twice–for the first time a summer in Würzburg, Germany, and for the second time a year in Leiden, the Netherlands. During those stays I learned to speak German and Dutch fluently. From 2000-2003, I worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language in Prague,. Czech Republic, traveling to businesses both as part of a school and as an independent contractor. There I stayed until I returned to Austin to attend obtain my teaching certification.

    From 2006 to present, I have taught German and ESL in central Texas.

    in 2016, I completed a Master’s degree in Educational and Instructional Technology from Texas Tech University.  This program concentrated heavily on instructional design in the context of technology and distance learning. My Master’s capstone project was to design an online course in Moodle/eLearn entitled Special Topics in Language and Culture, which has been used by my school district for course credit. Recently, I successfully migrated this course to Schoology. In fact, I was one of the teachers who was on the early Schoology training with the other ITSs and instructional coaches, and designed and taught workshops on Schoology to teachers at my campus and around the district. In addition, in my current job at Round Rock ISD, I have been intensely involved in redesigning curriculum and assessment for the district German courses, including during the COVID shutdown, in which we had to change to distance learning almost overnight. I was on the team responsible for creating SlideDecks to be used by all teachers of that subject. Furthermore, I took over as department chair, and led video conferencing meetings and trained my department in both practical and theoretical aspects of distance learning. I also designed and led district training on our school Language Lab, which uses SansSoloist software and hardware, and proctor AP exams on the platform annually. I am the go-to person on my campus regarding this lab. 

    As is probably obvious, I love languages and traveling. In addition to speaking fluent German and Dutch, I also speak conversational Czech and Spanish. I have friends all over Europe and other places in the world, and love going to visit them.

    In my free time I go to language conversation groups regularly, not only to practice my language skills, but to meet new people, with which I’ve been very successful. I also enjoy movies and music, and regularly go to concerts and films.

    In February 2012, I appeared in the Jeopardy! Teacher’s Tournament, in which I reached the semi-finals.