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Foreign
Language
Honor
Society:
(Link)
French
page:
(Link)
Spanish
page;
(Link) |
WHAT I DID
THIS SUMMER:
FOREIGN
LANGUAGE DEPT.
Members of the Foreign Language Department kept
busy this summer with a variety of activities. Senor
Morales continued to work on a part time basis as a
personal trainer in a couple of Rhode Island gyms.
"Helping people look better and feel better about
themselves has always been very rewarding to me,"
he says. Senorita Murphy also worked with people this
summer as she left on the last day of school to spend
July and August at a residential girls camp in the
Berkshires, coordinating and supervising staff and
camp activities as the Assistant to the Directors.
"It is a beautiful area of New England,"
writes Senorita Murphy, "and spending the summer
outdoors free from news and television is refreshing
and rewarding!" "For the sixth summer in a
row, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to
volunteer at ‘America’s Camp,’ a camp for
children who lost a parent on September 11. This
unique camp environment puts a lot of good back in the
world after such a tragic event and I feel blessed to
say I am a part of America’s Camp each summer."
Monsieur Benoît chaperoned yet another group of
students on a trip abroad, this time to Italy.
Other members of the department spent a portion of
their summer making academic gains. Senora Nordberg
took two graduate courses: one on educational research
and the other on the Argentine writer and poet Jorge
Luis Borges. For the first course she focused on
differentiated instruction in the foreign language
classroom. She is currently taking a course on
Socio-Cultural Issues in South America.
Senora Donahue attended a weeklong Advanced
Placement Institute for Spanish at Saint Joseph’s
College in Maine. The week consisted of a rigorous
look at the new AP Spanish Language Exam as well as a
sharing of methods and materials to maximize student
success. She tells us that "It was an excellent
opportunity, one that I highly recommend to every
member of the department. The success of our AP
students begins in the first year of learning a
language and continues with every year thereafter.
Spending the week with other enthusiastic, dedicated
and talented Spanish teachers was rejuvenating, and
also humbling. The instructor, Milagros Juan-Ojermark,
a chief reader of the AP Exam, was a fountain of
knowledge." Senora Donahue’s summer immersion
was the perfect segue to the Spanish Exchange which
began this week as 20 Spanish students and their 2
leaders arrived Tuesday from Aranjuez, Spain. More to
come on the exchange…
Madame Gildersleeve also participated in a weeklong
course; hers was at Northeastern’s Dedham campus:
Teaching Foreign Language through the Creative Arts.
This was a week of poetry, story-telling, dancing,
movement, and the visual arts using the target
language. "Our goal was to connect with all
different learning styles to maximize student
learning. Just being around other professionals in the
field is inspiring, "writes Madame G.
Now that we are fully engaged in the new academic
year, the summer feels very distant. Still, the
benefits of our summer "vacations" will
continue to be felt throughout the year.
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