ISD 625-Saint Paul Public Schools

Silverio Rios was born in southern Mexico and raised in Mexico City. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree at the National Polytechnic Institute in 1988. While still in school, he taught Quality Control at a nearby Technical College and realized he had a passion for teaching. He has maintained this passion ever since. Mr. Rios moved to Minneapolis in 1995. In 1996 he co-founded (with a Minnesotan friend) a Spanish Conversational Club at the Basilica of Minneapolis. Spanish speakers from Latin American countries with Americans wanting to improve their conversational skills and learn more about Latino culture through concerts, poetry, readings, movies, salsa dancing, festivals and other social events related to the Latino Culture. It didn’t take long for group members to recognize Mr. Rios’s natural teaching ability and his profound understanding of the Spanish language. American members of the group started engaging him for one-on-one tutoring, and before long his clients included doctors, lawyers, engineers, psychologists, executives and teachers. Mr. Rios has created and developed his own method for teaching Spanish based on combining the sounds of each of the five vowels with those of each consonant. He has been teaching Spanish for the Saint Paul Public Schools Community Education Program since 1999 and the Resource Center of the Americas since 2005. He has also been leading Spanish Immersion groups to Querétaro, Mexico since 2004.