Spanish & Illinois

Click on this image to go to the website by Ann Abbott My previous post featured a video interview with a student who had taken "Spanish in the Community" and enjoyed it immensely . She specifically mentioned her experience interpreting at the parent teacher conferences at Central High School. I'm glad she had a good experience, and I hope even more Spanish students will participate. But fear often holds them back. Luckily, another former student, Jenna Kandah, created this wonderful website with helpful information about being a volunteer Spanish interpreter at parent teacher conferences . Read it and feel more confident as you go to help parents and teachers communicate with each other!

by Kelly Klus Parent Teacher Conferences This past week, some Spanish students from the University of Illinois went to Central High School in Champaign to volunteer as interpreters for Spanish speaking families during parent teacher conferences. This was an awesome opportunity for us- and it was pretty tough! My overwhelming thought while we were having these conversations is how difficult and frustrating it would be as a parent to not be able to communicate directly with the adults that spend the entire day with their kids. Not being able to communicate successfully with your child’s teachers could create a dependency on the child as a sole communicator of what is going on at school. I imagine it would also be very difficult for parents to know what questions to ask or expectations to have if they themselves had never been to high school, or had been to high school in another country. Parent-teacher conferences can be emotionally intense; both parents and teachers want the...