Mrs. Maureen Santamaria, a teacher by training and vocation, founded the Children’s Center for Language and Culture, Inc. (ChiCeLaCu) in 2007, marking the inception of the first Spanish immersion center in Northern Virginia. ChiCeLaCu’s journey began with the Saturday School at Epiphany United Methodist Church in Vienna. The program soon expanded to include after-school and preschool programs. In 2009, ChiCeLaCu opened its location in Vienna while continuing to offer its preschool program from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax. That same year summer camps were introduced and Spanish at Your School was launched, which expanded the center’s reach to several public and private schools in Northern Virginia. ChiCelaCu is an official contractor for Fairfax County Public Schools.

In 2019, ChiCeLaCu moved to the City of Fairfax, and in 2020 opened a second location in the Tysons / Falls Church / Vienna area. ChiCeLaCu rose to the challenge facing educational centers during the pandemic years and quickly and effectively adapted its services to an online format. Henceforth, ChiCeLaCu began offering online classes for highly proficient/native speakers and language learners, allowing course selection to expand beyond language classes and into drawing, coding, and mathematics, providing other fun ways to learn and practice Spanish! These online classes are conducted by experienced educators and are designed to provide the same quality education as our in-person classes. ChiCeLaCu’s foray into the publication world in 2020, following decades of direct classroom experience with outsourced books and materials, yielded nearly 50 Spanish early literacy books that are now available worldwide on Amazon and used across all programs. 

Nearly 3000 (and counting) students have participated in ChiCeLaCu’s Spanish immersion programs and benefited from its unique  Pre-K to 6th-grade Spanish curriculum. ChiCeLaCu Fairfax City and ChiCeLaCu Tysons / Falls Church count on an outstanding team of professionals, each with a wealth of knowledge and expertise and a passion for teaching Spanish to children.