Glasgow Middle School offers Spanish for all grade levels

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

The demand for Spanish speaking skills are at an all time high, both globally and in the U.S., with Spanish being the most common non-English language spoken throughout the commonwealth at approximately 2.71 percent, or roughly 145,000 people, of Kentucky’s population. In light of this fact, many schools in the state, and in the U.S. in general, are looking for ways to provide the best education possible to their students.

While the specifics of the curriculum are largely at the discretion of local districts, and the Kentucky Department of Education does not require foreign language credits in order to graduate, most universities require some level of a “world language” like Western Kentucky University, which requires “students to demonstrate novice-high world language proficiency by taking a test or completing the second semester of any world language or ASL.”

One solution to this growing demand is to offer Spanish language classes at an earlier age. This is the route Glasgow Middle School has opted to take by offering Spanish to sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

Elizabeth Woosley, GMS librarian and Spanish teacher, began teaching at Glasgow High School in 2012 after she spent time in Spain helping English-as-a-second-language students. She taught three levels of the foreign language, actually helping establish Spanish III where advanced students went to local elementary schools to help ESL students there, before moving to literacy coach for the district for the 2022 school year.

Over the course of the year she began missing the student interaction and the classroom, so when a librarian position opened up at GMS she readily applied. According to Woosley the previous librarian taught coding and so they approached her asking if she would have interest in teaching Spanish as an elective. She agreed saying she enjoyed the challenge and that it would be a very good opportunity for the students.

“Anytime a student can learn at a young age they’re going to absorb more,” Woosley said. “It’s just a great opportunity to be able to learn this before high school and we’re lucky as a district to offer this to younger ages because they are able to possibly take those higher classes in the future.”

In addition to giving the students real-world skills they can use in high school and beyond, Woosley also said these Spanish classes provide the chance for them to “brush off their fears.”

“All my students come in here saying the same thing, and my high schoolers said this too, ‘I don’t know any Spanish, why am I in here?’” Woosley said. “They’re in here to learn, and to brush off those fears and see that they can learn a foreign language.”

An example of real-world utility is exemplified in Linley Richardson who is one of the sixth graders taking Woosley’s class. As she worked on her Ofrenda, she said the reason she is taking this class is to eventually go on her church’s mission trip to Honduras.

“When I’m older I can go there and talk with them and actually know what they say,” Richardson said.

Unlike high school where Spanish classes are an hour a day for a year, these GMS classes are only 9-weeks, which forces Woosley to select a “highlight reel” of topics including valuable alphabet and grammatical skills alongside entertaining cultural activities.

She said this Spanish class — which is roughly the equivalent to a Spanish I high school class — is only the beginning with possible expansion opportunities depending on student success and interest.