FARMINGTON – Foreign language teachers and students met with SAD 9 School Board members Tuesday evening to highlight language instruction in the district.
Elementary school Spanish teacher Carol Perez discussed the importance of beginning foreign language instruction at that level, explaining that teaching students foreign languages while they’re very young helps them remember words and grammar longer after classes end.
She then read a first-name-only list of former students who’re using foreign language skills learned in SAD 9 in their jobs today.
“Odessa has traveled extensively around this hemisphere, and now works in public health in Boston doing AIDS prevention,” Perez said. “Alana lives and works in Paris Jamie, and many other students in the military found a use for language,” while deployed, she added. “And Jeremiah works for an engineering company in Mexico, Maine. Every day, he uses his German.”
Perez also highlighted the accomplishments of former Mt. Blue student Heather Hurst, who won a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant in 2004 for her work as an archaeological artist and illustrator. At the time, Hurst credited Perez, who taught at Mt. Blue before teaching at the elementary schools, for some of her success, saying without knowledge of Spanish she would not have been able to work on the digs where she began doing reproduction work.
“In a process as long and grueling as language acquisition elementary education is crucial,” Perez told the board. “The long-term study is what paid off for these students over time. I would like to thank you very much for giving all of our students that opportunity.”
Schools’ own report cards
The principals of Mt. Blue’s High School and Middle School attended the school board meeting to discuss their schools’ report cards. Each was asked to name both specific positive and negative elements from the reports and discuss the ways in which the school plans to implement the feedback.
Mt. Blue Middle School Principal Gary Oswald said the results of his school’s climate survey, during which students were asked questions designed to measure students’ comfort at school, were very positive for school year 2004-2005.
He said he was “kind of amazed” to learn students generally feel they have had a positive experience at the Middle School. He learned that students respect the staff and feel respected in return. They are also “bothered when they see other students being either verbally insulted or physically bullied.” The Middle School needs to work on bringing a certain, unnamed subgroup of students up to MEA standards, Oswald said.
High School Principal Joe Moore said his school’s report card demonstrated results almost opposite those in the Middle School. While the school is on monitor status in math, he said, he sees the negative status as a positive because “we anticipated there was misalignment and this year we’ve started” applying new math instruction techniques.
While in general, Moore said, students performed “up to standards” in all subjects except in math, the High School’s Climate Survey showed that only about 70 percent of the students feel respected by their teachers, and only about 30 percent feel school rules are applied and enforced fairly.
“That was very troubling to us,” Moore said. He said he and his staff plan to “hold a mirror up to ourselves” and study ways they can make students’ experiences at the school more positive. “We want students to feel great about being here. We want teachers to feel great about being here. We want parents to feel great about being here,” he said.
The school has already started implementing measures designed to “give students a stronger voice,” Moore added.
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