Barry B. Carstetter
Growing up in the Appalachians; Southern West Virginia (on a dairy farm) and Northern Pennsylvania, where he finished High School, Barry Carstetter began learning Spanish as a youth, even though he had not yet met even one Spanish speaking person, and would not until he was fifteen.  Barry  had a burning desire to learn the Spanish language. His childhood heroes were Zorro, The Cisco Kid, and movies that depicted the genre of Old Mexico, i.e. Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Western's. He loved the music of Santana, Malo, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and The Baja Marimba Band. By chance, one day at the city library he noticed old and damaged books and records being thrown away.  After a little dumpster diving, he came across a set of  ten, slightly damaged, LP records containing hundreds of Spanish phrases. After memorizing all the phrases from the records, he then enrolled in Spanish classes at his local high school. However, after years of traditional classes of verb conjugations and grammar drills, making straight "As" and even becoming President of his High School Spanish Club, he became disillusioned with the traditional academic approach to learning and eventually concluded that fluency, in any foreign language, could not be achieved in a classroom. He believed that if he were to truly achieve his  dream of speaking Spanish fluently, he would have to acquire it and not just study about it out of a textbook, in the stark, cold setting of a classroom. So after graduation, he became a volunteer with a non-profit organization which led him to south Texas and eventually on to Coahuilla, Mexico, where he taught illiterate native speakers to read and write Spanish in an all Spanish speaking environment. It was during this time that he began to speak Spanish with native fluency and formulate some of his own theories about how language is acquired. In 1987, Barry attended a workshop presented with the methodology called Accelerated Learning. The workshop was facilitated by Robert Kiyosaki  an American investor, businessman, self-help author and motivational speaker, best known for his N.Y. Times Bestsellers Rich Dad Poor Dad series of motivational books and other material published under the Rich Dad brand. The impact it had on Barry was phenomenal. He asked Robert and his team  about the method, where could he learn more.  Even though the information at that time was scarce, (read why it took a while to get to the U.S.), The Russians owned it. Barry found out that the first "acid test" on Accelerated Learning was teaching the Italian language to a group of twelve students in five weeks, 3.5 hours a day, five days a week.  Uniformly, participants achieved a basic conversational ease in words, testing above 90% accuracy in recognition and recall, and 65-70% retrieval capacity.  As a result, the young man who once concluded that foreign language could not be learned in a classroom,  went on to create a system of classroom teaching and learning based on Dr. Georgi Lozanov's Accelerated Learning, that to date, Barry and his teachers have successfully used to teach over 10,000 students to speak Spanish here in the U.S. and abroad. 
 

About our Company

Integral Learning Systems LLC (ILS) a limited liability corporation, is an organization that is committed to fostering the growth of accelerated learning methods and philosophies in training and education. To do this, we offer Spanish language courses and workshops in the method of accelerated learning .

With the Lozanov principles at the nucleus of his teaching, Barry has also introduced other disciplines into his teaching system which he calls IntegraLearning™. Technologies such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistics Programming), TPR (Total Physical Response) and Brain Gym® contribute to his system, which has been successfully used by thousands around the country.

Barry is the Central Texas coordinator of The International Alliance For Learning (IAL), a member of The American Society For Training And Development (ASTD), a lifetime honored member of Lexington Who's Who, and has served as an advisor on the Governor’s Commission On Law Enforcement , Spanish Advisory Council (TCLEOSE). 
Barry lives in the Austin hill country with his wife Laura and their two cats, Amante & Beso.