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I am excited and and nervous to take on this new challenge. I will be the only teacher in my high school to teach "Spanish for Spanish Speakers" and I am a little scare of not meeting expectations. I want to meet the needs of my students and challenge them because they are awesome!

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I'm excited to be learning with others on building more effective heritage language programs and getting new ideas on how to think differently about shaping our heritage language program.  Biggest challenge continues to be to push myself and my teachers to rethink what we've learned about teaching in heritage language programs and find ways to interrupt harmful practices to our students and get new ideas to empower our students.

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My biggest challege: Will I be able to create a class that helps my students feel passionate about their culture and language?
Whath excites me: Learning! Listening to what others have to say about heritage learners, classes!

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One thing that I am most excited for with our heritage language program is that I have a blank slate with a lot of support. Many districts and teachers don't get support for this program, despite it being incredibly important, and I am excited to have been given the go-ahead with whatever resources I want to develop and build this program. That being said, my biggest challenge comes from this being a new program as well. I am starting this new program with students who have been working together for bilingual language arts for the last 3+ years in their middle and elementary schools. I am coming in as a new teacher to the district, and I worry that my lack of relationship with students and my lack of confidence n my skills in speaking Spanish may be a rough transition for me when I'm trying to develop the trust and respect with my students.

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I'm looking forward to gaining insights into how to build a viable HL program within the framework of our existing Spanish-language curriculum. I think the biggest challenge we face in our program is understanding who the Heritage leaners are and how to best serve them in a multilingual classroom.

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I am very excited to gain new insights and new knowledge from this class and from my colleagues who may have already embarked on this work.  The challenge that I have going into this course is that I am not sure what our model will look like.  Our enrollment does not always allow us to run a class with low enrollments and I am not sure if we will just theme existing courses and market them for heritage language speakers or if we will need to revisit everything and go through curriculum commission.  I can't wait to meet with everyone to see what you all are currently doing.  What has worked for you and what has not worked for you.  I look forward to meeting you all soon.

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I am excited to be given the opportunity to learn more about the ins and outs of heritage language instruction. As a heritage learner myself, I have felt the pressure and stigma that I'm sure our students feel when they think that their language abilities aren't up to par with the rest of their peers because they never officially learned the language. Tied to that is what I see is a challenge for teachers and students of heritage languages--how to make students feel validated about their knowledge. I also feel uncomfortable about forcing students to adapt their language to fit some academic standard that is based on privilege, which could make them feel that their language is "wrong"/not appropriate/not good enough simply because it doesn't adhere to the grammatical structures imposed from academic settings. So, I'm hoping to learn from you all and hopefully learn how to make sure our students feel validated about their own cultural and linguistic know-how.

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This is the second year for the heritage program at my school, but my first year teaching it. I spoke to some students who were in the class last year - very high level speakers of Spanish - who dropped at semester because they didn't feel challenged. I want to be sure that I can address the needs and goals of ALL of my students! My anxiety and excitement overlap. I can't wait to provide a space for my heritage learners to be able to express themselves and learn about the importance of their connection to their heritage and the Spanish-speaking world!

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Building a program that includes HL students.

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Building a program that includes HL students.

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I am excited to be starting a HL program in my building this year. Our district has offered them in some of our buildings for a few years but the population in our building is expanding at a fast rate and we were able to get approval to start the program in our building for the 2021-2022 year. I am looking forward to building our program from the ground up in the hopes that we will eventually be able to expand the program to French due to our French population growing as well. I am nervous because this is the first time I have taken a task of this size but I am confident that it will be successful as long as we continue getting support from the district and I am able to continue to do different things to learn how to make our program the best that it can be. I think this is a great step in helping me and our building reach our goals of growing our language programs and I look forward to this week.

-Amanda from Cincinnati, OH

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I'm excited that our university is finally reviving a Spanish for Heritage Learners course that has been inactive for a decade and was never taught. I won't be teaching it, but I will be helping to get the word out for the class and building it into a bigger program, hopefully. Our challenges are related to enrollments. If we don't get a significant number of students, the dean will cancel the class. At present, we only have the resources to try one class at the 300-level. This means most of our courses are mixed, including those I teach, so I'd also like to learn how to better serve heritage learners in other language classes and in other culture/literature/film classes in the Spanish major.

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I'm excited to learn more from this institute about how to best serve our heritage speaker students, but I'm also wondering how to face the challenge of a very diverse range of learners lumped together in the same classroom. Our institution has tried to keep heritage speakers classes running in the past and has run into the problem of not having enough enrollments to justify a separate class for heritage speakers. So, that enrollment piece will be one of our biggest challenges. As a result, our heritage speakers are most often lumped in with non-heritage speaker students, so I'm hoping to learn strategies this week for how to serve both populations at the same time.

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I'm lucky to work in a school that's had a Spanish for Spanish Speakers program for (close to) a decade, but it's been a constant ebb and flow of support & then cuts. I'm excited to get ideas to incorporate into our existing curriculum as well as new upper level classes, and I also want to become a better advocate for our program, since we've unfortunately seen a series of cuts in the past few years. I'm also excited and nervous for teaching a course of heritage and L2 learners together, since this will be a new experience for me!

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Connection through language and culture with HL students

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Connection through language and culture with HL students

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I'm excited to expand my knowledge in teaching strategies that I can incorporate in my courses. Currently, our program doesn’t offer courses specifically geared towards Spanish Heritage speakers. This means that I usually have a few Heritage speakers in my courses with L2 students and have always felt that I’m doing a disservice to them by not furthering their language skills through our emphasis in L2 learning.  I feel that this workshop/program will be the first step in creating a course that is culturally relevant and inclusive for Heritage speakers. And hopefully in the future, I can transform this knowledge into a curriculum for future offering of HL courses.

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I am excited to be expanding our DBE program into 4th grade next year, however, we are facing many challenges as we think about upper elementary into middle school. Since Hmong has traditionally been an oral language with a rich oral history, we have limited instructional resources available to teach the language, especially in a bilingual ed setting.  We are creating everything from scratch and constantly revising each year.  While many school districts have developed materials for elementary, many have yet to develop materials for middle and high school.  We also need to identify key features of the language and culture that should be taught at all grade levels and begin to standardize the language for teaching.

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I am excited to start the institute where I will find people as passionate as me about "Heritage Languages" I have 25 students in one class at 25 different levels.  I wrote the initial curriculum that will fit maybe 5 of my students, I realized that quickly.  This is my 4 year teaching the class, the district wanted to table the class the second year, one of the high schools did and now the class is gone. I requested to get those students to be able to travel to my high school sadly I will get maybe 3 students per year.
I also noticed how low the heritage students scores were and that the majority had no idea in how to take the ACT test.  I realized that my voice represents the advocacy for equal academic opportunities for heritage speakers, giving them the opportunity to have biliteracy added to their bilingualism. That keeps me up at night because I know they can do it the hard part is for them to believe it.
Next year they will be part of a dual language program... I know they will give their best.
Astrid from Missouri.

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I am excited for any immediate take-aways that would be advantageous to the HL students in my non-heritage Spanish classes. Furthermore, I hope to propose a HL course and lobby for additional services to support my school's Latino/a/e students. Within our building, the challenge will be resources--human and otherwise. Even, now, we are feeling the squeeze on the global language offerings and there is an active dual language immersion program, as well. The programs are like competitive cousins! -Kris from MN

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My excitement and challenge are connected.......We will be implementing a Heritage Course for the Fall of 2022.  This is a big undertaking to create a new course and making sure we are serving the students in the way we are intending.  We offered a Heritage course in our district in the past, but there were challenges and it only lasted a couple of years.  I am excited that we have been given a new opportunity to develop a course and we are being given lead time to learn and create over this coming year before we implement it.  We have experienced challenges trying to best serve our Heritage learners in our World Language classrooms.

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This is our first year. I am excited we have finally gotten the support of the district and admin we needed to get approval for the first level of the heritage class. I am nervous to be the one who is piloting it. I want to make sure it is a success and that it can be passed on to other schools and teachers and continue to serve our students well.
I am excited to be able to hopefully bring a course that serves heritage students in our district and have them be part of the development of it.

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Learning a heritage language can be an act of resistance when there is a social and political pressure to be monolingual and speak only English. It can be contentious when native-speakers from Spain think that the way we speak in Latin America or the Caribbean is somehow wrong.

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Thoughts on starting our heritage language program

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Thoughts on starting our heritage language program

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💗I am thrilled to finally begin our heritage language program with our first course dedicated to these amazing learners. We've been teaching them integrated in our Spanish language courses for years, but this upcoming year they will finally have their own course and I'm excited and anxious about starting it.  🙌😬😊 I feel that the differentiation needed presents a big challenge, but I'm very much looking forward to learning how to better assist them in their learning, celebrate their heritage & diversity and hopefully aid them on their journeys to be lifelong language learners.
~Katie from Dayton, Ohio