Mrs. Maureen Santamaria, a teacher by training and vocation, established and founded the Children’s Center for Language and Culture, Inc. (ChiCeLaCu) in 2007. This marked 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 simultaneously offering its preschool program from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax. The addition of summer camps and the launch of ‘Spanish at Your School’ in 2009 extended the center’s reach to several public and private schools in Northern Virginia. ChiCelaCu is currently an official contractor for Fairfax County Public Schools.

In 2019, ChiCeLaCu moved to the City of Fairfax, and later, it 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 our 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, after decades of direct classroom experience with their books and materials, yielded nearly 50 Spanish early literacy books that are now available on Amazon and used across all ChiCeLaCu programs. After 18 years of experience, approximately 5,000 students have been in their program; ChiCeLaCu has an outstanding team of professionals, each with a wealth of knowledge and expertise, offering in their Spanish Immersion Schools in Fairfax Northern of Virginia, a proven curriculum that leads to long-term success from Pre-K to 6th grade.