Profesora Sandra Davidson has been a Spanish instructor at West Texas A&M University for 28 years. She grew up in the Texas Panhandle in Pampa, Texas. Davison enjoyed learning and speaking Spanish in high school and decided to major in Spanish. Davidson received her bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a master’s degree in English at West Texas State University. She later earned another master’s degree in Spanish at Texas Tech University. 

Before teaching at WT, Davidson taught Spanish at Canyon and Randall High Schools for ten years. She began teaching at Randall when it was a new school. Although she has enjoyed teaching, she also enjoys hobbies like spending time with her friends and family.  

“I enjoy skiing, though I don’t get to ski very often,” Davidson said. “I ski on the snow with my husband and son. We usually go to Taos, New Mexico and I’m not a very great skier, but I don’t fall very often.”

Davidson started skiing when she was about 30 years old. She would go with her husband and a group of friends. 

“The first day, all I did was complain and cry and yell and cuss and fall down and everyone would have to wait on me,” Davidson said. “So then the next day I got a little bit better, at least enough to enjoy it.”

Davidson also enjoys gardening. She grows flowers and vegetables and hopes to get a greenhouse soon to protect her garden from wildlife and the tough weather of the Panhandle. 

“I love to garden; I love to have my hands in the dirt. I like growing vegetables— lettuces, spinach and arugula,” Davidson said. “I like growing flowers, but I have to protect them from our animals, our domesticated animals and the wild animals that live around our place.”

She also grows habanero peppers inside her home, using her habanero peppers for her other favorite hobby, cooking with her husband.

“We’ve been married 37 years, and we’ve been cooking always, together even when we were dating, we would always cook something,” Davidson said. “We have started with new recipes that we try to stick to the first time we make something and then we decide we want more or less of a certain flavor the second time we make it.”

Davidson and her husband enjoy cooking steaks, soups and a jalapeno salsa that she learned from a lady in Ciudad Juárez. She got the recipe after building a home for herself through the group called Casas por Cristo, an organization helping build homes for families in need.