Indiana teachers and administrators continue to rise to any challenge that befalls them. Dual language educators have an even larger challenge with ensuring that students are still spending at least half of their time learning in the target language. Collaboration and sharing of resources will help lessen the workload. The dual language community has always excelled in these areas. Please continue to reach out for any needs, and please share any creative ways your program is still ensuring that students are using their productive skills in the target language so it can be highlighted!

The Batesville Mandarin Dual Language Immersion program knows that dual language will enable their students to become better prepared for the global community and job market as well as to have a better appreciation of people who have different cultural perspectives and practices. With so many Spanish programs in Indiana, one might wonder why Batesville chose Mandarin.

The Batesville Community School Corporation (BCSC) actually began a Chinese Global Initiative in 2013. They have five Sister Schools with elementary and high schools in China which allows students to have authentic exchange experiences as they progress to higher grades. BCSC has hosted Chinese students and Chinese educators in the past, and BCSC teachers and administrators have taught in Guangzhou and Beijing. Additionally, the city of Batesville has a Sister City in Haiyan County, Zheijiang Providence, China.

Chinese is the number one spoken language in the world and has seen a rise in the U.S., increasing almost 360 percent over the past three decades. Mandarin is quickly becoming the most demanded second language in the world- knowing Mandarin will give BCSC students an edge when competing for employment as they will be able to compete in the global economy of the 21st century.

Batesville provides the only Mandarin program within the state. Their first year of implementation began during the 2016-2017 school year. This year, the program has been implemented successfully through the third grade with a fifty-fifty model. BCSC has passionate, involved parents who hold events for the Chinese New Year. With the invested administrators, teachers, and parents, BCSC will continue to experience success.

The IU Dual Language Summer Institute will be virtual this year and take place from June 8 to June 11, 2020. Below are the sessions. Please see the attached flyer for more information!

• “Bringing Leaders to the Table: Building and sustaining exceptional Dual Language

Immersion Programs”

• “No Child Left Monolingual”
• ”Working with children with speech and language disorders in a language

immersion context: Strategies for enhancing learning and cross-disciplinary

collaboration”

• “Culturally responsive teaching and curriculum planning in dual language

programs”

The National Association of English Learner Program Administrators is excited to announce that it will be hosting a webinar for dual language featuring Joan Lachance and David Nieto. Dr. Joan Lachance, University of North Carolina, is one of the co-author's of the National Dual Language Education Teacher Preparation Standards.. Dr. David Nieto currently works as an assistant professor at Northern Illinois University and previous worked as the executive director of BUENO Center for Multicultural Educaition at the university of Colorado Boulder.

In order to collaborate across districts, please join us by adding resources to the growing, Indiana Dual Language Google Drive! There are folders for each grade level. This could be a wonderful area in which to share ideas and resources. Please contact Nicole Leach at nleach@doe.in.gov or Samantha Morron at morron@mccsc.edu if you would like to have access and contribute.

Indiana University and the Indiana Department of Education will be partnering up in order to create Can Do Statements specific to dual language for our state. We would like to align these vertically, and we will need a large work group for this process. We are expecting three to four in-person meetings along with possible virtual meetings. Please join us in this exciting endeavor. If you have an interest in joining the group, please complete the Google Form below.

Purdue University welcomes Cohort #2 to its Dual Language Bilingual Education Graduate Certificate Program. Dual language educators throughout Indiana will join Purdue in this important investigation of their own practice.

https://www.education.purdue.edu/academics/graduate-students/degrees-and-programs/graduate-programs/english-language-learning/bilingual-certificate/

Purdue also welcomes over 120 Indiana educators to their programs in-service programs in ESL licensure add-on, Dual language Bilingual Education Graduate Certificate, and their online Masters in Curriculum and Instruction. #BoilerUp @greenteanow @EllPurdue @PurdueEDU

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Patricia Morita-Mullaney! Below is the social media write-up that has been shared.

Patricia Morita-Mullaney is an assistant professor of Literacy and Language in the College of Education. Her research focuses on the intersections between language learning, gender, and race and how this informs the identity acts of educators of bilingual students. Guided by critical and feminist thought, she examines how these overlapping identities inform the logics of educational decision making for bilingual students.

Dual Language teachers looking for ideas on how to incorporate culture into their content-focused lessons and who may need some ideas to implement digital tools for remote learning, please join AFS-USA’s educator webinars for free each Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET. The April 1 webinar will help teachers encourage their students to “Emotionally Connect to Content.” Register for any/all of the webinars here.

Click here in order read about one dual language teacher's response to ensuring that her students are able to hear Spanish from her through Youtube videos of her reading stories to them. One example is posted below. If any Indiana teachers have creative ideas like this, please share out!

Now is the time to think about staffing your dual language immersion classrooms! Did you know that there are two options for schools through the partnership with Sagamore Institute/Global Indiana? Schools can hire either a highly-qualified teacher through the Embassy of Spain Visiting Teacher Program (option 1) OR schools can hire an international native speaker independently (option 2). You can email Martha@GlobalIndianaInc.org for resumes of potential teachers. In addition, please fill out the NO OBLIGATION request for teacher resumes here: https://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/effectiveness/spanish-visiting-teacher-program-application-sy-20-21.pdf

Finally, here is a LINK to a WEBINAR that Martha and Pilar hosted to explain the details of employing international teachers: https://bit.ly/WebinarRegion8

At this point in time the decision has been made to cancel the two-day Teaching for Biliteracy workshop that was scheduled for May. We are exploring the possibility of rescheduling this to the end of February, 2021.

The Indiana Dual Language Pilot Program grant's due date has been extended to Monday, June 1, 2020, by 4:00 PM EST. Please submit the grant via the Jotform below.

The upcoming U.S. Census will determine the federal funding Indiana schools receive. The census impacts academic support, special education, school lunch, and Head Start/early learning programs. The Indiana Department of Education has created a website resource for superintendents, teachers, and families. Learn more here:

https://www.doe.in.gov/INCensus2020?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term

Dual Language and English Learner Specialist

Email: nleach@doe.in.gov
Website: https://www.doe.in.gov/standards/dual-language
Phone: (317)232-0572
Twitter: @NicoleNLeach