An article from the New York Times describes an outstanding Arabic language program being offered at an elementary school in Iowa.

Zahra Al-Attar drove down the two-lane highway from Iowa City to her morning classes here. As she entered Kalona, population 2,200 and change, she rolled past the harness shop and the veterinary clinic, those reminders of her dislocation. She noticed, too, a horse-drawn buggy on the shoulder, an unexpected cue for memory.

When she was growing up in Baghdad nearly 40 years ago, she had ridden a similar cart to school. On occasion, the driver would let her hold the reins. Here and now, the buggies belong to the Amish. And into their part of Iowa, she had come to teach Arabic.

While the Amish do not send their children to the public schools, considering them too worldly, Ms. Al-Attar’s students at Kalona Elementary are the sons and daughters of Mennonite families who have been here for generations, or of Germans and Czechs who arrived in Iowa a century before the new teacher.

Yet when Ms. Al-Attar bounded into a kindergarten early last month, one Muslim in a roomful of Caitlins and Haileys, the walls decorated with paper candy canes for Christmas, she was greeted with the chirping chorus of an Arabic song. Over the next 30 minutes, until the first period ended, Ms. Al-Attar led the class through the Arabic numbers 13 through 19 and the Arabic words for "hand" and "pencil." Together, they sang an alphabet song, with the letters pegged to familiar objects like a duck, a lemon, the sun.

Two hours later, when Ms. Al-Attar took her first break, she said with a touch of rapture, "Every day, I’m like, whoa, how did this happen?"
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So last fall, in the second year of the federal grant, Ms. Al-Attar’s peripatetic path delivered her to Kalona Elementary School. Each week, all 230 pupils from kindergarten through fifth grade receive two 30-minute lessons from Ms. Al-Attar...

The Newburgh School District has teachers with native speaker expertise in interesting foreign languages. Why are they not encouraged by the administration to offer innovative programs?

The New York Times points to an increase in foreign language classes in elementary schools in "Building a Nation of Polyglots, Starting With the Very Young" Could things like this happen in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District? Should they?

But with an economy that recognizes few geographical borders, and with people from all over the planet becoming our next-door neighbors, more Americans are demanding language instruction earlier in school.

Martha Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said that while there is no reliable data on the trend, her organization keeps learning of more school systems that think paying for elementary school language teachers is money well invested.

Since September 2006, all students in grades one through five in Loudon County, Va., have been given 30 to 60 minutes of Spanish instruction each week. Last year, officials in Fairfax County, Va. -- which, with 165,439 students, is the nation’s 13th-largest school system -- decided to expand the study of foreign languages to all 137 elementary schools over a seven-year period. Twenty-five Fairfax schools provide 30-minute lessons twice a week in Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese or French starting in the first grade. Ten schools have ambitious "immersion" programs where math, science and health are taught in a foreign language.

Paula Patrick, the Fairfax system’s foreign language coordinator, said Americans have for too long had a "mind-set that everyone else in the world could learn English." Her district is receiving appeals from businesses that need global-ready travelers and from a health care industry that needs translators.

Here are two slightly older articles about the challenge the Newburgh School District faces teaching ESL students.

From the New York times, November 1, 2006: For Hispanic Parents, Lessons on Helping With the Homework

Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.

Carmen Vazqueztell, the district’s director of bilingual education, runs six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district’s bilingual liaison, pinch-hits for parents and helps students do homework.

And from the Times Herald-record, August 6, 2007 Course helps kids to grow; Literacy program uses books, gardens

The Newburgh School District, Orange County's largest and most diverse, is trying something new with its older elementary kids this summer. It's called "To Grow From Who We Are," a four-week multimedia literacy program that encourages students to explore their identities as they practice new language skills.

"This is about finding our roots," says Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education. Hence the tiny gardens.

Students planted their window boxes on the first day of the program, the same day they started reading "Seedfolks" by Paul Fleischman.
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The City of Newburgh, which anchors the school district, is three-quarters minority, with a large Spanish-speaking population. In the past 10 years, the number of English as a second language, or ESL, students enrolled in Newburgh schools has nearly doubled. The district enrolled more than 1,500 ESL students last year -- more than the total number of kids in the average Orange County high school. Of those, 94 percent are Hispanic, but there also are Chinese, Uzbekistani and Jamaican students.

This summer program sounds truly innovative and inspirational. Carmen Vazqueztell is doing great work for the Newburgh community.

In the Sunday, Septermber 9, 2007 Times Herald-Record on page 15B there was a noteworthy item under "Academics".

An NFA student was given a scholarship to study Japanese in Japan for the summer. Congratulations to Chelsea Sweitzer and her teacher Mrs. Seiko Rhone.

In addition to having experienced life abroad, and having used Japanese day-to-day among native speakers, Ms Sweitzer is sure to have some good stories to entertain college admissions personnel in the year ahead.

Hopefully the Board of Education will take note of this accomplishment and will see to it that Mrs. Rhone is employed in the teaching of Japanese instead of more general teaching duties. They would do well to consider the wisdom of their decision a couple of months ago to cut staff for the teaching of Japanese in the district. In May of 2007 at the recommendation of the Superintendent, 7 of the 9 current members of the Board of Education voted "to Abolish a (1.0 FTE) Japanese Teaching Position and Create a (0.6 FTE) Japanese Teaching Position."

If studying Japanese provides students in the district with unique opportunities to learn, qualifies them for generous scholarships, makes them more desireable college applicants, and allows them them to experience something of a foreign culture, why does the Board of Education and District Administration not encourage this?

Congratulations to the intrepid students and wise administrators of Chester, Goshen, Greenwood Lake, Highland Falls, Minisink, Monroe-Woodbury, Tuxedo and Warwick schools. Mandarin is an excellent subject to study.

One thing's for sure: The kids seem excited to start school, even at this information session about a week ahead of time.

About 120 sixth-graders in eight local school districts will take Mandarin Chinese this year, thanks to a three-year $1 million grant from the federal Department of Education. Elementary school students in some of those districts, too, will begin a cultural exchange, communicating with students at boarding schools in China via an interactive Web site and through video conferencing.

Local students take new Chinese class, By Simon Shifrin, Times Herald-Record September 04, 2007