MISSOURI FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDENTS TO BENEFIT FROM TEACHERS' TRAINING

Teachers representing diverse demographic areas, languages, and institutions throughout Missouri received a week of intensive training in Missouri State Foreign Language Standards on the University of Missouri Columbia campus in late July.

Donna Ellis, Spanish teacher froom Jackson High School, was shown how the Missouri Foreign Language document aligns with the National Standards for Foreign Language learning and the Missouri Show-Me Standards. Numerous experts in foreign language teaching gave presentations on implementing this approach: Lisa Hendrickson and Karen Fowdy from Monroe, Wisconsin presented 'Teaching Lessons from the Standards Perspective.' Dr. Bob Headrick, currently writes materials for EMC Learning, presented the State and National Standards familiarization session. Dena Bachman and Carol Lund "taught" the participants through creative demonstrations how to create and implement the learning scenarios for performance based tasks.

Participants at the week-long developed unit plans, learning scenarios and assessments based on National and Missouri standards. The institute was supported by grants from DESE, FLAM, and SCS (Central State Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) as well as individual districts' participation fees. Plans are currently underway to prepare these documents as guidelines for foreign language programs throughout the state of Missouri -- a tremendous effort on behalf of the teachers involved.

"Opportunities like this make my students better language learners and me a better language teacher," Ellis said. "My students will be able to show me, their parents, and the community that they can use and understand a second language."

Plans are underway to have a Missouri Foreign Language Standards draft document ready for review by spring, 2001. This document will include materials prepared by the teacher/participants from the summer workshop.

It will take time to change many teachers and their way of thinking and teaching, but Missouri students will be stronger in their language proflciency, more creative in their thinking and hopefully be better motivated to learn a foreign language for their future career possibilities. Missouri students must develop second language fluency to be competitive in the 21st century.