U-M students will teach Spanish to Ann Arbor third-graders

September 3, 2008
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  • umichnews@umich.edu

ANN ARBOR—A new University of Michigan School of Education initiative will provide foreign language instruction to every third-grader in Ann Arbor public schools beginning fall 2009.

Through the newly formed Ann Arbor Languages Partnership, U-M education students fluent in Spanish will teach the language to third-graders in all 21 Ann Arbor elementary schools for two 30-minute sessions each week. The program will be expanded to include fourth- and fifth-graders starting in 2010-11.

The apprentice teachers will be supervised by U-M faculty and mentored by each school’s media specialist, who interacts with every student in the building and is conversant with the entire school curriculum. The design brings together the building and community-level expertise of the media specialists with the expertise in language pedagogy and teacher development of the U-M teacher education faculty and graduate students to create a true professional laboratory.

“It’s truly a win-win situation for everyone,” said Donald Freeman, U-M associate professor of education and director of teacher education. “Children will learn Spanish from the U-M apprentice teachers, as these new professionals are learning themselves.”

The finances are mutually beneficial as well. Without the partnership design, the district would have to spend nearly $1 million for such a program, which would not be economically feasible, Freeman says. The joint program allows the U-M School of Education to create a professional learning laboratory for its work in world languages, while responding to the increasing need for certified Spanish teachers in Michigan and around the country.

The benefits to students are clear as well, he says. Research has found that children exposed to two languages at an early age can be more flexible and creative and reach higher levels of cognitive development. Indeed, most individuals become linguistic “adults” by the age of 12, and a person’s ability to use and to learn languages in the future is enhanced if he or she has studied a second language as a child.

The new program, which will be further refined by U-M and the Ann Arbor School District this year, is based on the Common European Framework—a Council of Europe language-policy program currently used in many nations around the world.

The framework organizes language according to learners’ goals, which are expressed in statements of what they “can do” in the new language. It is linked to a print or digital Language Passport, a language assessment and documentation process recognized worldwide.

The U-M/Ann Arbor schools partnership will create opportunities for increased collaboration at all levels, Freeman says. More languages may be added in the future.