April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
LANGUAGE EDUCATION
Habla Español? 'Si,' say Catholic students
Mater Christi School in Albany, for example, begins teaching Spanish in preschool.
"It is taught from the four-year-old preschool program through grade eight. It's a full subject starting in grade five," said principal Theresa Ewell.
"The younger that you start, [the] more natural [it is] to them," said Ms. Ewell. "It enables them to become familiar with it at an earlier age. It increases their ability and their success later."
At St. Mary's Institute in Amsterdam, students start their Spanish education in middle school. SMI tends to get a surge of students transferring in at that grade level, so the school makes sure everyone is at the same page at the time of the proficiency exam that students take at the end of eighth grade.
"There's a fine balance to meet all of the students' needs," said principal Giovanni Virgiglio.
Just for fun
St. Francis de Sales School in Herkimer has a very different language program: It just started, and it's run by volunteer Joanne Young, who teaches Spanish to grades two through six once a week.
"It's not a graded class," said principal Kathleen Coye, "but they've learned a lot and they enjoy it."
Mrs. Young, who was previously a foreign language teacher at a public school, was asked by Ms. Coye to help start the Spanish program at St. Francis. The non-graded class is informal: "It's just to get the kids exposed at this point," said Mrs. Young, "but I'm hoping that they'll continue the program."
Fifth-grader Emily Lyda is confident in her new skills: She told The Evangelist that "it would be fun to go to a country where they speak a different language. Now, we would know what they were saying."
At Catholic Central High School in Troy, all students learn Spanish. "Every student coming into seventh grade, even if they took Spanish from kindergarten, is placed in Spanish [at the introductory level]," said Dolores Kania, one of three Spanish teachers at the school.
Top of the class
After the preliminary Spanish class, students take an exam to decide their foreign language education path for the rest of their time at Catholic Central.
Higher-level students can earn college credit. "Spanish four and five are university-level courses," said Ms. Kania, who teaches the courses in conjunction with The University at Albany.
Many of the schools offer cultural studies in addition to language lessons.
"We had a Cinco de Mayo ceremony and then we did a lot with Christmas," said Mater Christi eighth-grader Natalie Brown. "We had an article that went with the traditions of each day. Then we looked at what food was made around the Christmas season."
Teacher Erin Kelly of Mater Christi said she tries to help students appreciate Spanish-speaking cultures: "It's important to understand how other countries aren't weird; they're just different."
At St. Francis, the students learn through a variety of different techniques, including songs and through the library's Smart Board, a touch-screen whiteboard that offers interactive lessons. Since the beginning of the year, students have been working on the "name song," introducing themselves and practicing vocabulary words by singing in Spanish.
"Spanish is a really awesome class; I like learning on the Smart Board," fifth-grader Matthew Sespopnik said.
More and more
Language education in Catholic schools is growing, too. At Mater Christi, Ms. Kelly said, "I believe you learn more when you have fun and there's not a lot of pressure on the students. [I expect the students] to try their best and to use the language as much as possible."
At Catholic High, Ms. Kania has seen this growth firsthand. Ten years ago, there were not enough students interested to fill both level four and level five Spanish classes each year; the school now has three sections of higher-level Spanish courses.
Upon graduation, the students have a decent level of proficiency. "They are quite good. And they want to speak it; they strive to speak it," said Ms. Kania. "They're not inhibited to try to speak it. They aren't embarrassed."[[In-content Ad]]
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