Funding Awarded for Foreign Language Teaching and Learning across Adirondacks
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
LAKE PLACID - The Adirondack Foreign Language Enhancement Fund (AFLEF) at Adirondack Foundation this year awarded $58,445 in grants to 32 classrooms—from pre-k to high school—across the region.
The grants are helping French and Spanish teachers help their students acquire language skills and develop cultural awareness in the following schools: Ausable Valley, Beekmantown, Chateaugay, Clifton-Fine, Colton-Pierrepont, Crown Point, Elizabethtown-Lewis, Indian Lake, Johnsburg, Lake Placid, Lakeside (Essex), Little Peaks (Keene), Malone, Mayfield, Newcomb, Northeastern Clinton, Peru, Queensbury Union Free, Remsen, Saranac Lake, Schroon Lake, St. Agnes (Lake Placid), St. Regis Falls, Ticonderoga, Tupper Lake.
Northeastern Clinton Central School French teacher Kathleen Erin Sample is using Chromebooks to introduce sixth graders to world news and events. She wrote in her application, “It is an amazing feeling as a teacher when a student hears a piece of real life media in a foreign language that they can understand. It is an even greater feeling when they learn a nation's culture and become more tolerant of others.”
In Ticonderoga, Spanish teacher Lynne Lenhart is building a resource library to help her students expand vocabulary and explore other parts of the world. “Through the readers and novels provided, they can explore the lives of teens in the Yucatán, Madrid, Ecuador and more,” she explained.
Funding for equipment and supplies will help St. Regis Falls Spanish teacher Jamie Leroux save time while preparing interactive notebooks designed to deepen student engagement. “Interactive notebooks engage the students tremendously, but the amount of prep work that goes into creating them sometimes discourages teachers from using them,” she wrote in her application.
Effective teachers are also lifelong learners. Grant funding will help Colton-Pierrepont Spanish teacher Kylie Pinkerton to attend a one-week Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency course in Philadelphia, PA. “I will learn the foundational skills of lesson and unit planning, assessment, assembling portfolios, literacy, classroom management, and more,” she noted.
“Across the region, the Adirondack Foreign Language Enhancement Fund is making a significant investment in our kids and teachers,” said Cali Brooks, president and CEO of Adirondack Foundation. “We are as honored to help the donors of this fund advance their philanthropic goals as we are to support foreign language teachers who bring passion and creativity to their classrooms.”