International Education Washington

Prospera: After School Literacy Program


Prospera: After School Literacy Program for Spanish Speakers
a conversation with Regla Armengol and Kristin Calaff, Ph.D.

Monday, March 6, 2006 
7:30 - 8:30 pm

Location: University of Washington Humanities Center
Communications Building 202
(View map with Directions to Humanities Center.)

Co-sponsored by the UW Early Language Learning Group, UW Division of Spanish and Portuguese, Spanish Resource Center, UW Humanities Center, UW Language Learning Center, Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT), and the Washington State Coalition for International Education.

Background

We heard at the Heritage Language Learning and Teaching program with Shuhan Wang and Betty Lau on January 30 about the importance of biliteracy. We need to offer our heritage language speakers the opportunity to becoming literate in their heritage language, as well as in English.

This was exactly the situation that Regla Armengol faced in the school where she taught in Virginia some years back. She was teaching in a Spanish partial immersion program. Every day she was working with the fortunate non-Spanish-speaking children in her class to help them become fluent and literate in Spanish. Meanwhile, down the hall, there were dozens of native speakers of Spanish who were never being given the opportunity to read in their own native language. It broke Regla's heart, and she decided to do something.

Regla and her colleagues, Kristin Calaff (who has recently moved to Issaquah) and Stephanie Fillman, launched an after school literacy program for the native Spanish speakers in their elementary school. They staffed the program with Spanish-speaking middle school students -- some of whom were native speakers and some who had completed the Spanish immersion program at the elementary. With grant funding, they were able to offer the tutors savings bonds -- money toward their college education. In this way, the program impacted not only the children in the elementary, but also the families with the middle school students, who might not have otherwise aspired to college.

Regla is well known in Seattle because she was the fabulous teacher who trained the Spanish immersion teachers at John Stanford International School and got the launched in 2000. She came back later in the year to help evaluate the immersion program, as well. Now, her focus is on Prospera and making biliteracy a reality for Spanish-speaking children -- and all children who seek to become literate in their heritage language.

Note: John Stanford International School is highlighted in the latest issue of Edutopia from the George Lucas Foundation. See: http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1472&issue=mar_06.

 

Resources for this Program

For more information about language immersion and the Heritage Language Literacy Club at Bailey's Elementary in Fairfax County:

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the following UW Departments and Centers and other community organizations for providing financial and in-kind support of the Early Language Learning Symposium on November 11, 2005 and continuing programs during Winter and Spring, 2006.

University of Washington

And our community partners:

This program was funded in part by a donation from the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT).

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