Stakeholders
Deanne Falls, who used to be the Principal at Bioscience High School during the years when we had Chinese and French in our world language program, kept in touch with me. She knew what my STF was about and said she was interested. In one of the emails she sent me, she suggested I created a club since adding a new course would take time, money and approval from the district. The chances of it happening were really small. She told me Mr. White is certified to teach multiple languages including Spanish and French, and that he might be able to help me set up a club. I liked her idea and took it into consideration. All I had to do now was ask Mr. White if he’d be able to help me.
Crystal Castro is a freshman at Bioscience High School whom I interviewed while looking for stakeholders. I asked her how she was doing in her Spanish class, Spanish for Spanish Speakers (SSS). This is what she said about her class: “ I’ve learned how to use accents when writing and I know some verbs can change how a sentence is written...I learned a lot about Dia de Los Muertos, and about other countries like Cuba,
Peru and currently we’re learning about Guatemala. (Crystal Castro, 2018,p)
Although learning other languages would bring many benefits, the Spanish class is helping students improve their grammar and their Spanish.
Mr. White and I talked about my STF and how I wanted to create a club to help students learn a language they’re interested in and for that, I needed someone that spoke the language and that was legally able to teach us at school. This is what he said:
Thank you very much, Liz
Unfortunately, offering course options does not always provide the flexibility necessary for our grade-level structures and organization. In the past some others have also argued that since our school is already so small, if students follow a course schedule based on their language choice, they might not have the experience to socialize with other classmates with a different language choice, and they might be even more isolated.