PRI – Dan Carsen
“World Language Academy is a place where the middle school has an indoor multi-floor “learning commons” some colleges would envy, and the program’s foundation helps buy duplicate materials written in multiple tongues. It’s a place where first-graders of all backgrounds talk about butterflies in Spanish, and where white middle-schoolers speak Spanish – or Mandarin – in the halls. The largest proportion of the student body is Latino, then white, then smaller numbers of blacks and Asians. And students aren’t the only ones connecting across cultures. “I feel like I’ve been a bubble my whole life. And coming here, I’m the minority,” says Lane Sharrett, a fourth-grade teacher who is white. She grew up nearby in Flowery Branch, Georgia, and unlike many of her colleagues, who hail from more than a dozen mainly Spanish-speaking countries, she teaches in English. She admits that in her youth, she and everyone she knew assumed “any Latino was Mexican.” She’s learned a lot about cultures and about bilingual education since then. Her students’ (and the whole school’s) test scores are very good, even though the tests are in a language in which her kids are taught just half the time.”(more)