When choosing a college, Tammee Higbee Petersen, who graduated from nearby Warren High School in 1991, said Monmouth "was a natural selection for me. I knew that I wanted to be a teacher and Monmouth had and still has an outstanding education department with an exceptional reputation."

Petersen received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education with a concentration in Spanish. After taking four years of Spanish in high school, she said the language finally "made sense" to her during her first Spanish class at Monmouth, and she continued taking classes.

Although some of her early teaching experiences involved working with Spanish speakers, Petersen said she "never gave much thought to being a certified bilingual teacher. I just thought that I could give extra support to my future students by being bilingual. It would be almost 10 years before I would actually take advantage of being bilingual and use this valuable skill."

Her ability to speak Spanish is why Petersen was hired by the Beardstown school district in 2005 to teach in its innovative dual-language program. Another Monmouth graduate, Edwin Ubeda, is also teaching in the program, which stresses that Spanish is a major key for educating and integrating its students

"My class was taped about a month ago for NPR," said Petersen, who is a fourth-grade teacher at Gard Elementary School. "At the beginning of the segment, I am speaking in Spanish while giving a math lesson. My students are speaking at the beginning and are also the students who were interviewed about their dreams."

About half of the academic instruction at Gard Elementary is in Spanish, roughly matching the ethnic breakdown of the student population, which has grown very quickly to 55 percent Hispanic from just a handful of such students not long ago.

"Our students receive their foreign language teaching in the context of other subject matter," explained Petersen, whose younger brother, Brian Higbee, is a Monmouth College graduate who teaches Spanish at United High School. "We do not have a ‘Spanish’ class but, rather, we teach math in Spanish and social studies in Spanish. Some of the reading instruction is in Spanish also."

The school used to separate Hispanic students who could not speak enough English to get by, but it found that the policy was not helping the students academically and was hurting them socially.

Seventy percent of Gard Elementary parents opted into the dual-language program, which expects students to become fluent in both languages, spoken and written.

"Ideally we are preparing students to be bilingual and biliterate," said Petersen. "We are preparing students who will be able to compete with other bilingual people from across the world. These students will be many steps ahead of their American counterparts when they enter the workforce because they are bilingual."

"My daughter is going to be so marketable when she graduates college," said one mother of a non-Hispanic child. "I could be shallow about it and say it’s crazy, like a lot of people think, but I’ve been open-minded about it since Day One."

One of Petersen’s colleagues commented that she has heard wonderful stories of their students helping at the local Wal-Mart when a Hispanic adult is having trouble checking out. "Out in the community, our children are building these bridges," she said.

Another noted that the program is helping change perceptions within the student body. "Our students have learned that just because one of their classmates doesn’t speak English, it doesn’t mean they’re not smart."

To conduct her teaching, Petersen said she had to take a state of Illinois language proficiency test, which she passed, and she must complete six graduate level courses within six years to become a fully certified bilingual teacher. She will finish the certification in May.

"I’m so proud of Tammee," said Susan Holm, MC’s Dorothy Donald Professor of Modern Foreign Languages. "It’s a wonderful story."

Holm said that the trend of her department’s students having practical experiences with Spanish in the working world is a growing one and goes far beyond what Petersen and Ubeda are experiencing in Beardstown.

Other examples include John Hickling, a school administrator in Des Moines, Iowa, who uses Spanish regularly, and Terri John, who has been teaching English in Spain prior to entering graduate school.

Also in Monmouth, several of assistant professor Vasant Gadre’s students have helped this semester during parent-teacher conferences. Current student Hayley Townsend, a senior from Grayslake, had a similar experience, being asked on her first day of student teaching at Harding Elementary School to step into the hall to translate a conversation with a parent.

Twenty-two students are currently majoring in Spanish at Monmouth, which Holm said is the highest number she can remember in her 22 years on the faculty. In all, 28 students are majoring in a modern foreign language at Monmouth.