Present:
UW: Paul Aoki (LLC), Hedwige Meyer (French), Paloma Borreguero (Spanish), Hussein Elkhafaifi (Arabic), Michele Anciaux Aoki (Washington State Coalition for International Education), Sue Webber (WAFLT), Katy Armagost (WAFLT)
Agenda
- Proposal for including Early Language in Title VI grant reauthorization proposals
- Plans for Early Language Symposium in the Fall (involvement of Title VI Center with UW Language Board?)
- Other World Language Initiatives
Notes from the Meeting
Desire:
- Create center to support Early Language Learning
- Obtain money to buy resources
- Support what is happening in the community
- Offer language classes in the community
- Offer workshops to prepare teachers
- Use center as hub to connect with other sites, such as heritage schools, overseas schools
- Create virtual center to connect to everything that's happening
- Get money for TA to send out enewsletter about what's happening
- Could involve service learning for high school students
How does the Spanish Center work? (Paloma)
- Resources and person
- Signed agreement with
- UW (tuition, housing, Spanish Dept - paper, computers)
- Spanish Govt (materials, language consultant shared with OSPI)
- -OSPI Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (~$2000)
- Get three components to pay something
- Encouraging other governments (Mexico, Peru) to get involved
Ideas
- Space -- Do we want a physical space? Virtual space?
- LLC - Room 123 to make space for videoconferencing
What support exists at UW for Early Language Learning
- Spanish (Tony Geist)
- Spanish Center (Josefa Baez, Maria Gilman)
- French/Italian (John Keeler)
- Near East (Hussein Elkhafaifi)
- International Studies - Exchange (David Fenner) - help with trips overseas
- Language Learning Center (Paul Aoki)
Have Klaus Brandl "clone" his methodology classes, orient it to early language learning and create 499 class (for undergrads and grads)
Needs in the community (Katy)
School districts want to know how to begin a program in early language learning
- UW could take leadership role on how to design a program
- Provide curriculum to follow -- easy thing to follow, works with different languages
- Offer free workshops (no credit), just to come learn about this
- How to develop long-term plan, including administrative planning (principal, parents, etc.), as well as teacher planning (curriculum, etc.)
- Teach about the basics of language learning (What does it mean to know a language? What are the goals? What are pitfalls?)
- Provide curriculum and context to heritage schools
- Show models of programs
- Be a clearinghouse for information and contacts
Long-term Goals (Paul)
In 3-4 year timeframe, ask for advanced grad student to take the topic up for research
- Which dept? Linguistics? College of Ed?
- Who do students in College of Ed work with over there?
- Eventually write a proposal to National Foreign Language Centers… (CARLA, OR, etc.)
Ideas for Title VI grant:
Specific components of proposal:
- TA (from College of Ed or Language Dept)
- Early Language Learning Symposium (yearly conference)
- Summer Workshop for Teachers in conjunction with early language learning camps in community
- Outreach workshops to the community 6/year (3 at UW and use ESDs to get around the state once/quarter)
Possibly put each of these components into different Centers' grant proposals… (e.g., Middle East Center supports Summer Workshop, West European Center supports Outreach workshop)
Umbrella concept for the grant?
Center for Building Language & Culture Capacity
Concept of enhancing or substantially upgrading language capacity in state of WA
- Need to see what current capacity is (and how it evolves ongoingly)
- Push language up from early years into K-12 and higher ed (reach higher levels of proficiency)
- In that way build in the World Language Standards (to support articulation)
Themes...
- Start early
- Articulate across levels (through proficiency assessment)
- Include cultural issue in grant proposal
To live in harmony with the world, we need to learn languages. To be prepared for 21st century challenges in economics and security, we need to build the capacity of US people to learn languages.
Next Steps:
- (Hedwige/Michele) Draft language for the Title VI proposal to give John Keeler (draft more detailed version for this committee, and more succinct version for the grant) done
- (Hussein) Set up meeting with Near East Center to talk about Early Language Learning (by end of July) in progress
- (Michele) Confirm whether we can meet with Mimi Met when she's here in August and notify the group done
- (Hedwige) Set next time to meet to review final language for Title VI proposal (if necessary) and to begin plans for Early Language Symposium (in August?) done