I taugh myself to speak german and I speak it very well.
The best advice is to learn the grammar real well, try to enlarge your vocabulary as much as possible and then submerge yourself into the language.
The best way to expand your vocabulary is by choosing 10 words per day, and making sure you learn them by heart (and also the gender, remember there are femenine and masculine nouns in spanish and it's not always obvious, like in 'Mapa', which is masculine). That's 70 words a week, which is not bad.
Make it a point to understand the grammar, specially the subjunctive. The best way is to do a lot of excercises, but also learn all the indicative tenses, to the point of not having to think about it. Luckily english and spanish are not so different grammatically: they both follow a Subject-verb-object pattern in most cases (except for the subjunctive, which is quite hard for non native speakers, but can be learned with practice).
Read a lot. Try to get spanish versions of magazines (like Newsweek...the spanish version should be available in the US). You can also use the web to read newspapers written in spanish (like
www.eluniversal.com.mx). Listen to the radio on the net too, and try to watch movies filmed in spanish. The web is an amazing resource, use it.
Like someone said, after you've got a firm grasp of the grammar and a working vocabulary, travel for a couple of months to a spanish speaking country. I don't think one month is enough. You have to make spanish speaking acquaintances and forget about speaking english for a while. It'll give you a headache at first but it's the only sure way to learn. Spending time in the country is not enough: My grandfather (american) has been living in mexico for almost 4 years now, but since he really has no need to speak spanish, he hasn't learned anything but the most essential stuff, whereas my mother, who didn't know one word when she moved to mexico, learned in less than 6 months to speak it perfectly (she speaks it like a native now) because she really wanted to and she had a real need to learn.
Once you have a good working command of it, start reading books. It'll be hard but always have the dictionary by your side, and write down all the words you don't know and look them up after your reading session. Make it a point to learn them. Soon you'll even be thinking in the language.
EDIT: A thing that helped me a lot when learning german in germany was the tandem programs offered by most universities. I don't know if there's something similar in the US but it works like this: I would get hooked up with a native speaker of german who wanted to learn or practice english or spanish, and I would in turn practice my german with them. It's a good tactic because you can take your time to focus in the language and ask more questions than if you were just casually talking with a random speaker.
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