TORRINGTON – Foreign language education strengthens our communities by helping bridge the gaps in communication between people, cultures and countries. The Torrington Rotary Club helped support local foreign language education by making a $4,500 donation to Goshen County’s World Languages department.

This money will go to help send Goshen County’s foreign language educators Lisa Wille-Racine and Beth Anne Heilbrun to the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) convention in Salamanca, Spain this summer. 

According to the about us page on www.aatsp.org, “The AATSP promotes the study and teaching of the Spanish and Portuguese languages and their corresponding Hispanic, Luso-Brazillian and other related literature and cultures at all levels of education. The AATSP encourages, supports and directs programs and research projects involving the exchange of pedagogical and scholarly information.

“Through extensive collaboration with educators, professionals and institutions in other countries, the AATSP contributes to a better and deeper understanding between the United States and the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations of the world,” it continued.

Wille-Racine said the AATSP conventions are international events that bring teachers from all around to learn about many different sessions. The overall theme for this year is new horizons for communication and culture. 

“It’s an international conference for Spanish and Portuguese teachers to get together to do their networking, to gain resources on literacy testing and to get better ideas on how to integrate languages into our public school system and how to do that in all types of schools,” Heilbrun told the Telegram. 

“[This conference helps our students by] bringing an international presence,” Willie-Racine explained. “There are many different and new creative ideas. It helps bring to the table the importance of language development in high schools and getting the kids ready to go [into careers].” 

Heilbrun said the conference also provided educators with resources that they can use directly with their students, like allowing them to meet teachers from all around the world. These provide educators with the opportunities to do pen pal letters and even Zoom meetings with students from around the world and their classes. 

“It is a jam-packed conference, with all kinds of wonderful support, resources, ideas, networking and skill building,” she continued. 

Both Wille-Racine and Heilbrun have been through several of the AATSP’s conventions, including last year’s convention in Puerto Rico. At last year’s convention, they learned about the biliteracy seal that had been introduced for high school students. 

According to Wille-Racine, while the biliteracy seal had been around for a while in the U.S., Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon and the Wyoming Legislature had just passed the Wyoming Seal of Biliteracy (WY-SoBL) in 2022. 

Heilbrun is the Goshen County School District’s (GCSD) biliteracy coordinator. It is her job to put together the test requirements and apply to the state for each graduate’s biliteracy stamp.

According to edu.wyoming.gov, “The law required the superintendent of public instruction to design and establish a Wyoming Seal of Biliteracy for conferral by a school district to a graduating high school student who is proficient in both English and one or more world languages.”

Heilbrun said in order for a graduate to receive the state seal of biliteracy they must meet graduation requirements, receive at least an 18 on the ACT and demonstrate at least intermediate or mid proficiency in all of the approved world language assessments. These assessments include the four areas of communication, i.e. speaking, listening, reading and writing. 

Out of Goshen County’s 2023 graduates, they had four students out of 17 who tested received the biliteracy seal from the state. Since this year’s graduates were the first to apply for this honor, and they are still going through the learning process of how to help their students prepare for the assessment, they hope to improve next year’s numbers. 

“This conference is going to be great [to help them learn how to prepare their students for the assessment],” Heilbrun said. “It will improve our knowledge so that we can bring that back to the classroom to make our kids more successful.”

At last year’s conference, Wille-Racine and Heilbrun were approached about doing a presentation at this year’s conference. 

They will be talking about isolationism in rural schools.

“What we’re trying to do, is become a networking organization for people that are in the smaller schools,” Wille-Racine said. “I came from a very big school and the networking was just phenomenal. Here we have two Spanish teachers for the entire district, (Wille-Racine teaches at Torrington and Heilbrun teaches at Lingle and Southeast). So, we decided that it would be nice to share with other teachers in Wyoming, or teachers in other rural schools, that don’t seem to get some of the information and attend the conferences.”

“Our focus this year, has been trying to connect rural schools because some schools reached out to us in Wyoming that didn’t know what the bilingual seal was, the performance objectives and some of the other things that are happening in world language,” she continued. “We want to be the promoters for that and create a pretty solid support system, not just for Wyoming but for all rural schools.”

The entire conference is about a week long, beginning Monday, June 26. The rotary club’s substantial donation helped cover much of the travel expenses for the event. Other funds were collected from the GCSD, the community and personal funds from Wille-Racine and Heilbrun.

“We really want to foster the development of oral language in Goshen County, so that’s what we’re trying to do,” Wille-Racine said. 

Throughout the country, it is becoming increasingly important for workers to be fluent in more than one language. Many employers are stressing the importance of their workers being bilingual, so they are more qualified to handle potential clientele.

“It’s a great ‘think tank’ and a wonderful celebration and then we can bring that back to our community and students,” Wille-Racine said.

Both educators expressed their thanks to the rotary club, the school district and everyone else involved.

“We really appreciate the support of our community, because it’s a community effort sending us, with the rotary club and the school district,” Wille-Racine said. “It makes us feel appreciated as educators. Goshen County has always been wonderful with a respect for education.”

“We’re super excited,” she continued. “We’re really appreciative and proud to represent Goshen County in Spain.”