The Monmouth College modern foreign languages department prides itself
on preparing students for active and creative contributions to their
school systems, their communities and the world. A recent report on
National Public Radio (NPR) showed that one MC graduate is doing just
that.
When choosing a college, Tammee Higbee Petersen ’95, 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.
The
progressive program has received national recognition thanks to the NPR
story, which originally aired in December. To hear it, go to
www.wuis.org/news/localnews.html
and scroll down to the “Beardstown School” choice.
“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.
“In my classroom are 19 fourth-graders – 13 native Spanish speakers and
six native English speakers,” Petersen said. “Our students are paired
linguistically and do depend on the other language model throughout the
day. It is amazing how this type of program has gelled relationships
between ethnicities. The languages are placed on equal ground. The
Spanish speakers are learning English at a faster rate than when they
were separated by language and the English speakers are learning
Spanish.”
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.
“I’ve heard from and about an unusually large number of
Spanish graduates this semester, and in every case our graduates – and
some of our current students – are being asked to use their Spanish
language skills on the frontlines everywhere,” she said.
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.
Closer to home, two recent graduates, Todd and Ana Fisher
Franks, were among a handful of teachers mentioned in a recent Galesburg
Register-Mail article. Ana is an English as a Second Language (ESL)
instructor at Monmouth-Roseville High School and her husband, Todd, who
teaches English, is one of three MRHS teachers fluent in Spanish. That
skill comes in handy, as there are 12 students at the school – and 98 in
the district – who are in the English Language Learners program. The
district hopes to hire more teachers like Todd, who are fluent in
Spanish as well as their area of study.
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.
