Hola, Soy Profe Potter.
My name is Alex.
I live in Portland, Oregon with my husband and our new baby boy.
I teach high school Spanish 1, 3, and AP Spanish 5 and I love my job.
2025-2026 will be my 12th year in the classroom!
I love teaching music in my Spanish class and am excited to spread that joy with other teachers and students as we build this community together.
The Mission
With your help, Cantarama can do all the things.
Our community is made up of teachers supporting teachers so that they can save time making resources and just bring some fun, joy, authentic language, and culture into their classrooms. Semester 1 can go fast, but Semester 2 can feel like a slog. That's where Batalla Cantarama comes in (to get us to the end of the year!)
Cantarama uses catchy songs and all different competitions to get students to fall in love with Spanish. Even your least enthusiastic students could walk in with a song stuck in their head. With a little bit of scaffolding, they'll even know what the song is about and be able to sing along. It's a great way to sneak in all sorts of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and other useful skills in a way that feels lively and fun. My hope for our students is that they learn about the world, connect to people in other communities as well as their own, find a new favorite song, and maybe even learn Spanish for years to come.
Finally, Comunidad Cantarama wants to make a positive difference, because, well, because we can!
We support Latino-owned businesses through our prizes and give back to the Bachata Academy, ensuring that learning Spanish also means celebrating and uplifting the communities that inspire it.
Giving Back: Supporting Bachata Academy.
10% of the money we raise this year will be donated to the Bachata Academy. I got to visit the school in 2019 as well as attend one of their shows. Learning to play music has been such a gift in my own life, and I was so inspired to see their program. They do amazing things:
The Academia de Bachata in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, is the world’s first—and only—school dedicated to bachata and merengue. Offering free daily instruction in instruments, voice, ensemble practice, and dance, it serves hundreds of children and teens through an immersive, collaborative curriculum.
Guided by Grammy-nominated musicians and deeply rooted in local tradition, students not only learn music—they become cultural ambassadors. Their student bands perform across the DR and tour the U.S., sharing Dominican musical heritage. Advanced students even train as junior instructors, strengthening sustainability and community leadership.
Run by The DREAM Project, a U.S.-registered non-profit, the Academy uses music to empower youth—instilling confidence, teamwork, creativity, and cultural pride.
