All third-grade
classes in the Ann Arbor, MI public schools will be learning Spanish next year. The year after, Spanish language education will be expanded to fourth and fifth grade classes. But instead of getting the taxpayers to foot the bill, Ann Arbor officials created an agreement with the University of Michigan to procure funding for the initiative.
Ann Arbor Superintendent Todd Roberts estimated that the language program would normally cost close to $1 million annually. Thanks to the Wolverines picking up most of the tab, the school district
will only be spending $100,000 a year - not a bad bargain.
Naturally, the university will be getting something in return, but it's not first dibs at the up-and-coming elementary school basketball players. The exchange will allow
the university to offer a K-12 foreign language teaching certification.
Fluent Spanish speaking students
in the university's teacher education program will
teach the elementary school language classes as part of their certification training. University professors and field observers will supervise the
student teachers, so kids don't end up babbling in Spanglish or Catalan (a language spoken in northeastern Spain that's a hodgepodge of French and Spanish). In the end, the kids learn how to express their contempt in Spanish and the teachers learn how to teach. Everybody wins.
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