advice on saving a high-school Russian program

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear SEELANGers,

One of our local high schools (which counts among its population a
non-trivial number of heritage speakers of Russian) currently offers
Russian for one forty-five minute period per day five days a week. This
single class combines five levels of Russian: first-, second-, and
third-year Anglophones, illiterate native speakers, and literate native
speakers (the last two groups are not always clearly differentiated, since
some heritage students have limited literacy). The combined enrolment is
approximately fifteen. Except for this Russian course, the instructor is a
full-time teacher of Spanish.

The school is now considering closing this program entirely because they
feel that it is not cost effective. Representatives of our university's
Slavic department and our Title VI center have been invited to meet with
the principal and the district-level coordinator of foreign language
studies next week, and they are interested in concrete proposals from us
for increasing their Russian enrolment and thus retaining the program.
Needless to say, we would like to see this program, which is one of a very
small number in our district that offers Russian, survive; we think it is
of considerable value to both heritage and non-heritage learners.

I have no experience with high-school-level Russian language programs
(other than from having been a student in one over twenty-five years ago),
and I would be grateful for any concrete suggestions any of you might have
for how my university might encourage the continuation of this high-school
program.

Thanks,

David
________________________________________________________________________

Professor David J. Birnbaum     email: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
Department of Slavic Languages  url:   http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/
1417 Cathedral of Learning      voice: 1-412-624-5712
University of Pittsburgh        fax:   1-412-624-9714
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA