Summer Spanish program proves to be effective virtual resource throughout COVID-19 and beyond

This article was written for our sponsor, Participate Learning.

Over the past two years, online learning has, understandably, skyrocketed in use. While the transition to remote learning may have been difficult to navigate at first, now that students and instructors have grown accustomed to it, there are plenty of uses to explore and leverage aside from primary instruction.

Participate Learning, an organization that partners with teachers and schools to provide a global education and real-world readiness, has leveraged online learning to help students preserve their language acquisition even when school isn't in session.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization worked with several of its partner schools to create an online summer Spanish program. Since launching, the program has provided over 7,500 free online lessons and has been met with overwhelming support and popularity from parents and school administrators across North Carolina and Virginia.

"After we ended the 2020 school year with remote learning, we were looking for any opportunity to expose students to Spanish as much as possible — because in a remote setting, immersion can be very difficult. So we were looking for any resource that would give the students more time in Spanish lessons and conversations," said Johanna Parker, director of innovation at Dare County Schools. "Participate Learning came to us and said, 'We've got this opportunity where kids can book times to engage in a lesson with a dual language educator through Zoom.'"

"The program was so popular, before it even ended we had parents reaching out to ask if we would be doing it again."

Since these lessons are offered virtually, it allows Participate Learning to enlist teachers from across the world. In fact, all the instructors are past participants of Participate Learning's cultural exchange program who spent time teaching in a U.S. school and have since returned to their home countries. While teaching these lessons virtually from South and Central America, they are encouraged to infuse their local culture into the lessons and provide a unique language and cultural experience for students.

At Mooresville's Pine Lake Preparatory, Principal Shelly Sims saw firsthand just how much a program like this was needed.

"Many immersion programs have a percentage of students who are heritage speakers that speak Spanish at home, but here that is almost non-existent. The modeling and the exposure to the language over the summer is a continuing challenge," said Sims. "We really want to expose them to the language as many days as possible. Not only has the online program helped catch us up or maintain those skills, but really those kids are excelling and moving forward with the language. It's helped us enhance the learning in so many ways."

In these immersion classes, lessons are purposefully structured so that students can take meaning away from the words and phrases they learn, instead of just rote memorization.

"Immersion is very different from a traditional Spanish class. In the situation where a teacher is holding up a flashcard that says 'red' and having the students repeat it back, kids don't learn as well that way. They learn by experiencing the color red in context — like here's the red pen or play with the red ball," said Sims. "Having those experienced teachers in immersion was really helpful and gave kids a similar exposure to what they would have in the classroom."

For Sims, another major benefit of the online Spanish program was that parents were able to see firsthand just how engaged their children were and the progress they had made.

As remote learning becomes more common and accepted, Parker expects to continue to see programs like Participate Learning's online Spanish program take off.

"Whenever parents can see things, they believe it. I think sometimes, since many parents didn't grow up learning through a computer, that they then base their child's experience on their own context — with a mindset of 'This is how I did school, so that must be the way to do it,'" said Parker. "But with something like the online Spanish program, they're getting a front-row seat to see that there are other ways to learn."

This article was written for our sponsor, Participate Learning.