Program Reviews

My teacher Betty was very warm and made me feel comfortable from the start. She was easy to understand although she didn’t “dumb it down” for me.

We were able to cater our Skype classes to meet my need of becoming more conversational in Spanish as I prepared for seeking employment in the area of immigration advocacy. It was also a great opportunity to learn about Guatemala’s history and current politics climate.

We’d meet for 2 hours each class, sometimes up to three times a week, and the time flew by each time!

I have spent 2-3 weeks in Spanish schools in Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, but believe that the best value for money, and most pleasant environment can be found at Don Pedro's in Antigua Guatemala. They only do one-on-one teaching - which I believe is the most efficient way to learn a second language - and the teachers are very pleasant and competent. Their afternoon site-seeing programs are always worthwhile, and they have a travel agency arrange for weekend excursions to see more of Guatemala.

During the lockdown, I am using their Skype teaching approach which works well.

Certainly highly recommended to anyone who wants to learn Spanish.

I've been taking online one-on-one Spanish classes at Don Pedro Spanish School for about a year now. I would recommend this school to anyone interested in learning or polishing their Spanish. My teacher Elizabeth has helped me a lot. She is an attentive listener, offers a flexible schedule, and has a caring instruction style. I am confident that Elizabeth can accommodate and effectively work with students with different goals and backgrounds. We have been focusing on conversation and auditory comprehension, as per my request, and I can't be happier with the results. All communication with the school and my teacher has been smooth and helpful.

My experience with Don Pedro school was all on Skype---I was not able to attend class in Antigua which would have been great if I had been able to arrange it. My Skype instructor Bety was excellent as she was very prepared, flexible and supportive--ensuring that I was able to focus on learning the language in a very practical way. The only challenge was the Skype connections that at times made it difficult to communicate. I highly recommend this school to anyone who wants to learn Spanish!!

I studied at Don Pedro in Antigua, Guatemala last year and have started taking Skype lessons with my same teacher. The Skype lessons the language school offers are so, so helpful. As a language student, I often find it difficult to keep up my Spanish skills, but taking lessons over Skype has really helped me learn more vocabulary and phrases that native speakers use. My teacher has been very flexible with scheduling and easy to contact. She has also been very helpful as she has given me many resources that I can use to better my Spanish. Another wonderful thing is that the Spanish lessons are taught in Spanish, which is great for language immersion. I highly recommend taking Skype lessons even if you are a beginner, because you won't regret learning with the teachers at Don Pedro. Learning Spanish will open so many doors for you and allow you to make deep connections to all the different cultures in Latin America. I can't recommend this program enough!

My family and I, including two teenage sons, attended the school for 2 weeks in August of 2019. We studied 4 hours a day. We loved the one on one instruction and all of us learned a great deal of Spanish that we practiced daily living in the friendly and very walkable city of Antigua. My husband and I continue our lessons, weekly on skype, since we have been back in New Jersey. We are both working with a fabulous teacher, Betty. It has really improved our Spanish to speak with Betty weekly. I enjoy my conversations with Betty and they allow me to use Spanish in talking about my every day life and experience while back at home. I can not speak more highly about Betty and the Don Pedro de Alvarado school!

I studied twice with Don Pedro in Antigua. The first time was for one month of full-time, one-on-one lessons with Lhena. I had studied Spanish throughout school when I was younger, and wanted to speak more fluidly in my 50s. Lhena is a wonderful teacher and I never grew bored with our 4 hours together each day. We had very wide-ranging conversations on many topics, and reviewed grammar (especially the subjunctive). Lhena is terrific at correcting my errors without interrupting the flow of the conversation. Several afternoons each week the school planned activities and visits to local spots for students: a coffee plantation, a jade factory, a macadamia nut plantation, to mention a few. One or two evenings each week there were dinners and salsa dancing at the school, and students were joined by many of the teachers and staff as well as a wonderful salsa teacher!

The year after I studied with Lhena, I wanted to maintain the Spanish language skills I had learned, and also focus on topics pertaining to immigration, since I was planning to volunteer with an immigrant advocacy organization on the US/Mexico border. This time I studied with Bety via Skype. Like Lhena, Bety is a warm, wonderful persona and Spanish language instructor. Although my request to study immigration-related vocabulary and topics was a bit unique, Bety rose to the occasion, bringing relevant newspaper articles, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) immigration forms and films to our lessons. I learned so much and enjoyed all of my lessons with Bety! I wholeheartedly recommend studying Spanish at Don Pedro in Antigua.

My daugther and I studied 2 weeks at the school. Back in Canada I took a package of hours to continue classes by Skype. My teacher was Claudia Raquel Muñoz Fernández, I truly recommand Claudia, she is a very good teacher. She is professionnal, punctual, she has a good methodology and she adapte the classes to my needs. She prepare the classes, send me texts to read, or documentaries to watch and the next class we were discussing and commenting on it. We discussed about our distinct culture and country. The exchanges were very enriching. This way of learning is very stimulating.

Thank you Claudia!

In 2014, I spend 6 weeks in the Don Pedro School in Antigua and had the time of my life. Last year I read that the school also offers Spanish lessons over skype. Prices are very reasonable, in comparison with what you pay here in Switzerland, for private lessons. The payment process is easily settled through PayPal.

Over a year now, I enjoy an hourly skype lesion each week. The connection runs to 90% stable although the school could improve some of its IT-equipment.

My teacher Dalia is doing a great job in that she makes the lessons very varied. Sometimes we talk about a current topic, sometimes grammar is in the focus or I have to do exercises. Dalia deals with my gaps by giving me appropriate homework, which we will discuss afterwards.

Overall: A great program, which I highly recommend to anybody, who would like to extend his Spanish skills and stay connected with beautiful Guatemala.

First, I found the school mentioned in the article: Antiqua Guatemala City Guide: What to see plus the best bars, hotels and restaurants (The Guardian March 30, 2018). The article mentioned Don Pedro school being one of the best and oldest in Antigua. I contacted the school, and asked if they could offer me a private online conversation class and they did. I studied 1 hour a week for about 18 months starting in 2018 with Claudia Muñoz Fernández who is a wonderful teacher with years of experience with people from all over the world and of different ages and levels of Spanish from complete beginners to advanced. She was punctual, a very good listener, not a constant interrupter for corrections like some teachers, friendly, not only Guatemalan but a fan of Guatemalan history and culture, interesting, funny, and very helpful just to name a few of her attributes. She made me feel very relaxed in such a short time that I felt we had been friends for many years. In addition, Claudia is very hard working, patient and adaptable to changes in class times and most importantly good at explaining intricacies of Spanish as well as her culture. I think she speaks English (my native language),but she never spoke it with me which was great. We only used Spanish.

Claudia definitely inspired me to want to visit Guatemala and I would not hesitate to study with her again at Don Pedro Spanish school in Antigua or online. Note, I did not study in Guatemala so I don't know about the school's accommodations.