Editors note: This is the first in a two part series looking at bilingualism in Athens.
Third-graders at Nelsonville-York Elementary School race to a pile of oversized clothing, throwing on jeans and T-shirts as Ohio University student CJ Fight shouts out clothing names in Spanish.
Fight conducts this learning game to improve the students' Spanish vocabulary. He is one of more than 15 OU students teaching foreign language to elementary school children as part of the Foreign Language in the Elementary School program started by OU Spanish professor Barbara Reichenbach.
The program primarily focuses on Athens City elementary schools, but students in Reichenbach's FLES education class also teach in Nelsonville-York Elementary every Spring Quarter, she said.
The program, which started in 2000, relies on student volunteers to teach 30-minute foreign language lessons once or twice a week, said Pam Andrews, gifted services coordinator for Athens City Schools.
With support from the administration and parent organizations at East and West elementary schools, the program has been integrated into kindergarten through grade six, Reichenbach said.
East Elementary is designated as the French school, while students at West learn Spanish, but the subjects are not official parts of the curriculum and are not graded, Reichenbach said.
At Morrison, Chauncey and The Plains, volunteers are placed based on teacher interest, she said.
Because of a lack of district funding and time restraints imposed by standardized testing, the program has not been adopted uniformly throughout the district, Andrews said.
The program began with funding from a $3,800 Martha Holden Jennings grant, Andrews said, adding that she submitted another grant proposal to the foundation in 2001, this time requesting $30,000. That proposal was rejected, she said.
I think it was rejected based on the fact that we didn't do anything as a district
Andrews said. We've been very lucky just to maintain what we've got.
Last year, Reichenbach received a $13,000 1804 grant, which has helped to finance materials for the program. The school district does not have a budget for the program, so materials have to be purchased with money from the grant or with volunteers' own money, she said. It started out as a pilot she said.
The goal of the pilot was to convince the school district to allocate funds to the program by demonstrating that teaching foreign languages to elementary school students has many benefits, including a positive impact on standardized test scores, Andrews said.
We were hoping that we would be able to incorporate it into the actual content standards in our schools she said.
Research shows that foreign language study in early education leads to higher achievement test scores in reading and math, according to a 2005 article from the Early Childhood Education Journal.
Only three percent of Ohio students in kindergarten through grade five study a foreign language, according to report by the State Board of Education's Foreign Language Advisory Committee.
Because of the pressure to prepare students for the Ohio Achievement Test, many teachers cannot find the time in the school day to allow for extra language instruction, Andrews said.
They see it more as an enrichment
extracurricular type of thing
Andrews said. It probably will not be part of the schools unless somebody makes it a mandate.
Next year, Reichenbach and the principal at the Plains Elementary are planning to start a language program in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades to expose students to two years of foreign language before they begin middle school.
Kacey Burke, a Spanish literature graduate student, places student volunteers at West Elementary, where students receive a 30-minute Spanish lesson each week. Even though students spend limited class time learning the language, they benefit just from being exposed to it, Burke said.
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CJ Fight explains a Spanish learning game to third-grade class at Nelsonville-York Elementary yesterday. Fight and more than 15 other OU students teach foreign languages in elementary schools in Athens and Nelsonville.
