Language News from Arkansas – The National Museum of Language

October 2024 News from our Language Leadership Council Liaison Freddie Bowles

The spring 2024 submission for the Arkansas Seal of Biliteracy (ASOB) once again exceeded previous applications. 776 Arkansas high school students earned the Seal demonstrating their proficiency in English and one or more other languages by high school graduation.

Forty-eight schools participated with four new languages added and five schools contributing first-time recipients. The most diverse school had eight languages other than English represented. Since the 2017 pilot year, 5,553 students have attained certification in 28 languages other than English from 105 high schools.

The Spanish RoadMap was released in both English and Spanish in December 2023. Faculty from the University of Arkansas Department of World Languages, Literatures and
Cultures participated in a research project funded by the University Chancellor’s Humanities Grant to create a policy guiding document that assesses the state of Spanish
PK-16 education in Arkansas. Arkansas is part of the “new south” migration destination. 251,277 Hispanics reside in Arkansas according to the U.S. Census 2021. According to the
Arkansas Department of Education, 51,038 enrolled students identified Spanish as their home language. Copies of the Road Map can be found here:
https://spanishroadmap.uark.edu/the-arkansas-spanish-language-landscape-report/

On October 11, 2024, the state world language professional
organization, Arkansas Foreign Language Teachers Association, celebrates its 50th Anniversary Conference at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. Brandon Locke, Director of World Languages & Immersion Programs in the Anchorage, Alaska, School District is the keynote speaker addressing the theme of New Challenges, New Opportunities. Arkansas recently passed Act 663, opening the door to Bilingual/Dual
Language Immersion in this English Only State. Brandon has also been a speaker for the National Museum of Language! https://languagemuseum.org/?s=brandon+Locke

On November 18, the Arkansas Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ARKTESOL) association will hold its annual conference in Hot Springs, AR, featuring Jo Napolitano as the keynote. Napolitano is author of The School I Deserve: Six Young Refugees and Their Fight for Equality in America (Beacon Press, 2021). The conference theme is “No Matter…Who, Where, What, or How.” Both conferences will offer sessions on Bilingual/Dual Language Immersion to support
school districts, teachers, and administration as they plan for this opportunity to develop proficiency in two languages .

August 2023 News from our Language Leadership Council Liaison Freddie Bowles

Record Awards of Seal of Biliteracy

Arkansas public schools set a record for the number of students receiving the Seal of Biliteracy with 716 students participating! Two new languages were added (Marathi and Serbian) and nine high schools had first-time recipients. Southside High School in Fort Smith had the most diverse representation of languages other than English (6), and Springdale Public School has the most certified students to date (1,302 total). Home, charter, private, and virtual schools also participated.

The Arkansas Seal of Biliteracy is awarded each spring and fall to students in grades 9 through 12 and is sponsored by the Arkansas Foreign Language Teachers Association (AFLTA) and the Arkansas Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ARKTESOL). The Arkansas Department of Education officially endorsed the Seal in June 2018.

Arkansas Foreign Language Teacher Association State Competition Winners

Twenty-three Arkansas schools sent 299 students on April 1 to the University of Central Arkansas to compete in the AFLTA State Language Competition. Students competed in seven languages: Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Spanish Heritage, and Spanish. Competition categories included a vocabulary bee, a culture bowl, talent, digital poster, live sketch, and a culture essay along with competition in the four skills of listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Winners received trophies and all competitors received certificates of participation.

The Arkansas Department of Education in partnership with the Arkansas Foreign Language Teachers Association hosted two webinars for multilingual teachers in July. The first webinar focused on the Arkansas Seal of Biliteracy . Secondary Spanish teachers, Martha Reynolds and Kristen Novotny, hosted the webinar for 37 participants who were interested in participating in the state effort to offer the Seal of Biliteracy to high school students. The second webinar, Supporting Learners to Move from Novice to Intermediate and Beyond, was hosted by Paul Sandrock, Senior Advisor for Language Learning Initiatives at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Forty-four participants focused on learners using language to develop their proficiency through meaningful, appropriate classroom tasks.