About Us

What is Maestro?
Maestro means many things. Maestro means teacher in Spanish. It also means conductor, as in a conductor of a symphony.

Maestro's founder and primary instructor is Cara Fulton.

Cara holds a Master's degree in adult education from the University of the District of Columbia and is a Peace Corps veteran (Honduras). She currently teaches advanced English as a Second Language at Howard University Continuing Education. In 2007 she earned the Outstanding Service Award there.

From 1999 to today, she has became known as "Crossroads Cara" from her success in the distance learning program to Africa with the African Virtual University. Using Crossroads Café (and other materials), students in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Burundi learned a great deal of cross-cultural communication in this high-tech English program. Read more about it when she was featured on the AVU site.

You can see pictures of her 2002 speaking tour to West Africa and travels on her Cyber Folder under pictures in the albums "African Virtual University (AVU)" and "Road Trip to Chinguetti."

She's well acquainted with many of the adult education programs in DC through her affiliation with D.C. LEARNs, the city-wide adult coalition. She edited their newsletter, The Coalition Builder, their first eight years.

Through her education and consulting firm, Maestro, LLC, she teaches workplace communication, American Accent development, and professional development workshops. She also conducts hands-on history tours of Washington, DC.

The Maestro Technique for Developing an American Accent
Like a conductor before a symphony, we lead you to proficiency in American Speech Music. American English has several musical qualities that you can learn to help you communicate better with Americans. For example, we speak with a jazzy rhythm. The stresses do not occur at predictable places. Yet, you can learn the system of sentence and word stress to pick up our rhythm.

Develop an American Accent to be understood -- finally.

Tours

Maestro also conducts hands-on history tours - either as stand-alone events or as part of an ESL or GED program.

Professional Development

If you would like to learn how to conduct high-quality, hands-on history tours of your own, consider taking a workshop with Maestro.

Cara's Cyber Folder

Take a look at Cara's Cyber Folder to see pictures, get links for learning, or if you join, you can use the documents to learn on your own.

Cara's Cyber Folder