Those familiar with Futuro Verde know that we are a community of professionals committed to on-going self-reflection and with a strong desire for continual school improvement. As we look toward the 2017 school year, I am excited to announce some incredible curricular improvements to come:
- Our whole-school 50-50 Spanish/English immersion program’s additional language component (currently French) makes a groundbreaking transition! Following the advice of current research and experts in the field of language acquisition, Futuro Verde will now provide a new course to all preschool and primary students called “Comparative Language Study”. This class will replace the current French lesson students receive in the primary grades. The reason for this change is responsiveness by Futuro Verde to new research that shows that one of the highest leverage investments in our young language learners is direct instruction and support “bridging” across all of their languages. Students will work with Futuro Verde’s language specialist and polygot, Debbie Bruylant, as the main teacher and will receive additional input and support from Futuro Verde’s new classical languages teacher, Futuro Verde’s new secondary French teacher, FV classroom specialists and even from me, the school director! The focus of the class will be students exploring all their languages within a context of: communication, culture, connections, comparisons and community. The goal is to foster young learners with strong metacognitive and metalinguistic skills, irrespective of their home language(s) and current proficiency in Spanish or English. This is a very exciting and innovative addition to our curricular offerings!
- Speaking of Classical Languages, I am proud to announce that Futuro Verde secondary students in 7th-9th grade will now have the option of choosing between French or Classical Languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic) as their additional language! Did you know that Futuro Verde’s music teacher, Oscar Leal Mendez, is also an accomplished scholar of classical languages? Students can now learn all about these classical languages by choosing to take the Classical Languages tract, starting this coming 2017 school year. French or Classical Languages- what will your middle years student choose?
- Speaking of our music teacher, Oscar Leal Mendez, Futuro Verde is proud to announce that we are finally able to increase music instruction at all grade levels in 2017! More music is music to our ears here at Futuro Verde!
- We are also proud to announce that next school year our primary students will have 2 arts classes a week from our new full time Arts teacher! So exciting, so inspiring- so much to learn and explore!
These are only a snapshot of the curricular improvements to come! Please make sure to schedule our end of the year whole-school celebration- Respect, hArmony, Peace (RAP), to be held on December 13th, into your personal calendar. Beautiful student presentations are not to be missed from 3:00-5:00 pm. Potluck dinner to follow! We hope to see you there!
