Sometimes the biggest ideas begin on the other side of the world.
In 2000, our founder, Brita Schumacher, was teaching kindergarten at an English immersion school in Seoul, South Korea. Every day, she watched five-year-olds move effortlessly between Korean and English. Seeing the incredible ability of young children to acquire language firsthand changed everything.
Inspired by what she experienced—and by her lifelong love of the Spanish language and its many cultures—Brita returned to Wisconsin with a vision: to make language learning accessible during the years when children learn best.
In 2001, that vision became reality when she opened a small Spanish school for children in Wauwatosa. She named it Futura, the feminine form of “future,” because teaching a foreign language to young children was, at the time, a truly forward-thinking idea.
Twenty-five years later, that vision continues to shape thousands of young learners and the communities we serve.
