This Issue's Theme: Global-Language LearningGreat facts, figures, quotes, and highlights from across our website.
SAGE ADVICE:
How Do You Prepare Your Students To Be Citizens Of The World?
Becoming a world citizen requires knowledge and experience of other cultures; U.S. schools do not provide that. Only travel and immersion in other cultures creates world citizens.
William Herbert Smith
Yang En University, Quanzhou, China
My students become global citizens by learning in an environment that encompasses service learning; cooperative-learning activities; and a view of themselves, their community, our country, and the world as interrelated pieces of a whole. We offer them the social, technological, and educational skills to succeed as tomorrow's global leaders.
Kathryn Desmond
Edutopia.org
FACT:
Which State Has 30 Language Immersion Public Schools, The Most In The U.S?
EDUTOPIA.ORG AUDIENCE POLL:
Can American Students Compete With Their Global Peers?
LANGUAGE LEARNING ACROSS THE GLOBE:
United States, England, Japan, South Korea, China, and Sweden.
COMMUNITY DISCUSSIONS:
I would like my students to see foreign-language study as a pleasure. When they're able to use language in real-life situations, to make discoveries about what it is to be American, and to have a deeper understanding that language refl ects culture, their enjoyment is so much deeper.
Shannon Miller
High school French teacher
VIDEO: Education Takes on a Global Dimension
Running Time: 07:08 min.
VIDEO:
"We really level the playing field. Everyone understands what it takes to learn a language, and everyone then begins to appreciate each other."
Karen Kodama
Principal, John Stanford International School, Seattle, WA
Edutopia.org/stanford-video
FACT:
Languages taught in American elementary schools:
FROM THE BLOGGERS:
"What I have rediscovered, years after trying to come to terms with Greek, is that learning a new language has enriched my awareness of the beauty of English, and expanding my Italian vocabulary has reminded me of unfairly neglected words in my mother tongue.
For instance, an Italian term for newspaper is quotidiano. This translates to the English quotidian, a much livelier synonym for the prosaic daily. Hearing the opulent, operatic music of Italian has made me listen more carefully to the music of English.
These pleasures and revelations would come to me no matter what language I had decided to learn. And though I am now an old student and have to work harder at learning, I understand the riches being offered."
