High School North Principal Michael Zappichi delivered the World Languages program report to the WW-P Board of Education, but the review committee made no recommendations on whether the district should offer addition languages.##M:[more]##
There had been an outcry in the community asking the district to add Hindi instruction to its World Languages program, a request the district said it would address after the program review. With the assistance of Greg Duncan of Interprep, an in-house committee consisting of Zappichi and teachers of all languages and levels, conducted the review throughout the 2006 – ‘07 school year.
The results were positive. Duncan said the WW-P program is exemplary. “Students leave your district with a demonstrated level of proficiency,” said Duncan. “You have incredible teachers.”
Zappichi outlined requests and goals for the program, all of which he says are aimed at an overall goal of “building fluency.” Most of the recommendations are geared toward improving the instruction of languages that the district already offers.
Zappichi said the report’s recommendations can be boiled down to two major categories. “One is in establishing clear benchmarks for student proficiency at the transition grades. In grade 5, grade 8 and Grade 12,” he said. “The second is a shift in focus to a curriculum that emphasizes authentic use of the language. We are working on that presently.”
Zappichi and the committee did not answer many questions about the report. He requested that the board read the 47-page document and several accompanying articles before meeting again with questions. No date has yet been set for a second meeting.
“The committee will continue to meet and will put together an action plan for implementing the recommendations,” said Kniewel. “We have a very noteworthy program. We are looking to get even better. We already have a program that other districts look to emulate.”
The report does not mention whether the addition of a Hindi program would benefit the district.
“When you look at adding a new program, there are five points to consider,” said Zappichi. “First, there is the availability of resources, second, the students’ opportunity for articulation, third, the language’s generalized importance in the world, fourth, the community’s input, and finally, the number of kids who use an alternative pathway with that language.”
The alternative pathway is a program by which the school district gives a student graduation credit if they pass a state exam in proficiency of a language that is not offered in school. “That hasn’t been something that has been publicized all that well,” said Victoria Kniewel, who will become superintendent of schools for the next school year. “We are publicizing it more, and once students start to take advantage of it, We will have better data to collect. We will use that as a factor in determining whether to add a language to our curriculum.”
The district currently offers Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, and Latin.
“In the 1970’s, there was a rush for schools to add Russian and Japanese. Those programs have disappeared,” said Zappichi when asked whether the district should add more language programs.
According to the Summer Institute for Linguistics, a 1999 survey showed that Hindi is the world’s fifth-most spoken language, behind Chinese, Spanish, English, and Bengali. However, a 1998 article in the Encarta Encyclopedia ranked Hindi second, with 333 million native speakers. Mandarin Chinese was first, with 836 million native speakers. Spanish and English were third and fourth. German and French were tenth and eleventh.However, Hindi ranked tenth on a list of the world’s most influential languages.
