ML Interest Tag: global-community

Can Your Child Dream in Multiple Languages?

By Meaghan Hlinka

Can your child dream in multiple languages? All kids have their unique talents and skills, bilingual or multilingual children have the extra ability of speaking and expressing themselves in more than one language. What special powers does this extra language bring them?

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

At Home and on the Playground

•   Improved self-control. Switching between languages activates the same areas of the brain that are active in applying self-control. Regular exposure to multiple languages exercises and strengthens self-discipline.

•  Easier adaptation to new environments. Multilingual children understand that different languages and cultures have different rules, a concept that can help them adapt flexibly to change and a variety of social settings.

•   Stronger ties to family and culture. Children who master foreign languages maintain closer bonds with their family and culture, which can help them develop a stronger sense of identity.

•   More opportunities for making diverse friends. Speaking multiple languages allows students to connect with children from a greater variety of backgrounds and cultures.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

At School & in the Workforce

•   Heightened focus. Multilingual children are more practiced at filtering irrelevant information and ignoring distractions. Suppressing one language to access another strengthens executive function – the ability to manage time and resources to get things done.

•   Better mastery of home language. Students who study more than one language are more familiar with the mechanics of language in general, from parts of speech to etymology.

•   Enhanced problem-solving and abstract thinking skills. Multilingual people tend to be more competent at understanding mathematical concepts, word problems, logic puzzles, and other essential STEM skills.

•   Greater competitiveness in a global and multilingual workforce. Doing business in today’s world can mean crossing cultural and linguistic borders on a daily basis. Well over half of the world’s population speaks more than one language, and many careers favor multilingual job applicants.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

In the Community & in the World

•   Increased tolerance and empathy. Studies show a possible link between multilingualism and empathy, perhaps because speaking additional languages requires seeing from more than one perspective.

•   Enriched travel experiences. Speaking the language while exploring another country is not only practical but also makes for a more authentic and immersive cultural encounter.

•   A stronger foundation for learning other languages. Once a second language is acquired, learning additional languages will come more easily and naturally.

•   More meaningful participation in a global community. Understanding other cultures and languages fosters a deeper understanding of our complex and interconnected world – as well as our role in making it a better place.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

What Is Important to Keep in Mind When Introducing Your Child to Another Language?

Starting early is key, even child who are not yet speaking can benefit from exposure to another language. Everyone knows children learn languages more quickly and easily than adults, so the earlier the better.

Consider multiple languages, learning to learn languages is a skill set in itself. Multiple languages if taught by native speakers can have compounded benefits. Switching between languages activates the same areas of the brain that are active in applying self-control.

Quality is critical, be sure the language instruction comes from a native speaker. Even at a young age, children can recognize the subtle nuances of a language and quality of instruction is important.

Set a goal, a new language takes time. It takes 6-7 years to be become fully fluent in a new language, plan to commit to this language for a significant period of time.

Consider an immersion program, these programs offer dedicated instruction in a new language and provide students with significant exposure to this language. Programs vary from 50% of the day to 100% of the school day in the target language. Different program models exist, most public immersion programs offer the core curriculum translated in the target language, other schools such as the French or International schools provide a dedicated curriculum blending language and culture.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

Take It From Mom

As a mother of a 3 year old trilingual daughter (French, English, and Slovak) I see the benefits everyday. When she learns a new concept in one language she carries it over almost immediately to the other two languages. We chose to expose her to these three languages because my husband is from Slovakia and I, as a French/American, growing up in the US have always regretted not being fully proficient in both languages.  We tried our best to balance the languages so no one language was more dominant. We started early, during the first two years child care was split between a French speaking nanny and her Slovak speaking grandparents. We set the goal for her to be able to speak fluently with both sets of grandparents and she is there but we are conscious that to maintain this will take more work. We enrolled her last year at Rochambeau The French International School where 80% of her day is in French. The school teaches the French curriculum which is uniform across all French schools around the world and also has a robust English language program based on the core curriculum. We hope the priority we have placed on language learning will give her a strong sense of identity and the confidence needed to study, work, or live wherever she chooses.

Meaghan Hlinka is Admissions Associate at Rochambeau The French International School in Bethesda, MD. Interested in language acquisition, she is bilingual French/English and has studied Arabic, Turkish, and Slovak. A mom to a 3 year old daughter she feels lucky to be able to share multiple cultures with her daughter. 

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Celebs Honor International Day of the Girl with CARE & Care Bears

by Erica Loop

Some of your fave actresses, performers, influencers and artists are coming together to celebrate International Day of the Girl. The 30 plus celebs are joining the humanitarian organization CARE and the iconic children’s brand Care Bears for a life-changing auction.

Superstars such as Hilary Duff, Sia, Kacey Musgraves, Meghan Trainor, Michelle Williams, Sophia Bush and more will each create their own Care Bear inspired by CARE’s work with women and girls. CARE will auction the bears on eBay, with the proceeds benefiting charities.

 

So what types of bears are the stars creating? Actress Sophia Bush said, in a press release, “This International Day of the Girl, I’m proud to team up with CARE and Care Bears to celebrate women and shine a light on all that we can achieve when we raise our voices and demand change.” Bush continued, “I created Justice Bear—well, because RBG is my hero!—and to remind the world that while we’ve come a long way, our fight for civil rights is far from over. With women and girls leading the charge, I believe a world in which everyone is equal under the law is achievable.”

CARE President & CEO, Michelle Nunn, said, about the cause and the auction, “If we’re going to help solve the biggest challenges we face as a global community, we’re going to need the power of the next generation of changemakers–powerful girls from around the world.” Nunn went on to say, “When women and girls have the right tools, like access to clean water, education, and economic opportunities they are better placed to succeed. Bidding on a Care Bear will help us bring more of these tools to girls around the world.”

The list of celeb-designed bears includes:

  • Alexandra Daddario, Safety Bear
  • Ashlee Simpson, Equality Bear
  • Bellamy Young, Women In Agriculture Bear
  • Bianca Lawson, Heart Chakra Bear
  • Haylie Duff, Girl Power Bear
  • Hilary Duff, Clean Water Bear
  • Holland Roden, Refugee Bear
  • Iman, Diversity Bear
  • Kacey Musgraves, Earth Magic Bear
  • Katharine McPhee, Give Girls a Voice Bear
  • Meghan Trainor, Youth Are The Future Bear
  • Michelle Williams, Health For All Bear
  • Paisley Family (Brad, Kimberly, Jasper, and Huck), World Hunger Bear
  • Paris Jackson, Global Feminist Bear
  • Sia, Youth Empowerment Bear
  • Skai Jackson, Climate Justice Bear
  • Sophia Bush, Justice Bear
  • Sunnyside Up Cast, WASH Bear
  • Zac Posen, Living Blue Bear

The Care Bears will make their grand debut on Oct. 10 at the Van Ness Elementary School in Los Angeles at a special learning event hosted by CARE and Care Bears. The International Day of the Girl bears will then travel to Showfields in New York City on Oct. 12. The activities will continue with actress Holland Roden and a conversation, sponsored by Olivela, about her experience in Jordan with CARE.

—Erica Loop

Photos: Courtesy of CARE and Care Bears

 

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So, You’ve Volunteered to Coach Your Kid’s Sports Team

By Christian Dashiell

The first time I volunteered to be a head coach for my kids’ soccer team, I did so confident of my bonafides as a rookie coach. I boasted a closet full of soccer scarves, I watched at least two soccer matches on television most weekends and my four kids helped me hone the skill of wrangling multiple children at once.

Confidence began to wane in the days leading up to the first practice as two worrying realizations began to dawn on me. First, I didn’t own a whistle. Also, I hadn’t figured out a great game plan for introducing second graders to the beautiful game. While videos of kids doing soccer drills were plentiful on the internet, all of those kids belonged to academies and had clearly seen actual soccer matches before.

My Google search for “how to turn a group of kids who have never played soccer into mini-Neymars” was coming up dry and I was suddenly uncertain that I would be up to the task of effectively coaching this team.

Feelings of inadequacy typically keep people less impulsive than myself from signing up as a coach to begin with. The rest of us dive in headlong and figure it out as we go, but not without a good bit of consternation and self-doubt. With participation in sports falling and child obesity on the rise, a shortage of confident coaches is not going to help curb current trends.

After taking a deep look at how the needs of kids were not being met in regard to physical activity, Aspen Institute Project Play identified the importance of coaching as a key component of their task to “embrace a sport model that welcomes all children” with the goal of developing the ability, confidence and desire to be physically active for life by the time kids reach age 12.

To help address the need for coaches at the community level, Nike and the United States Olympic Committee worked together to develop the newly released How To Coach Kids resource. “We believe coaches are game changers when it comes to giving kids a positive experience in sports that will inspire them to be active for life,” said Caitlin Morris, General Manager of Global Community Impact at Nike.

“With How to Coach Kids we’re working to grow the ranks of coaches who make a difference in kids’ lives and communities every day.”

What has resulted is an incredibly slick and helpful website, with an accompanying app that is free for anyone to use. A 30-minute introductory course on coaching basics does a great job casting a vision for why coaching is important and how coaches can create a positive experience for all kids.

Even as a parent with multiple seasons of different sports under my coaching belt, there were a lot of points throughout the class where I was making mental notes so that I can implement new ideas the next time I coach.

One of my big coaching hang-ups has been my desire for kids to play the sport the way it’s played at the highest levels as opposed to thinking outside of the box and considering how it can be practiced with consideration given to the kids’ developmental stage so that they have more fun. The course helped me see how my underlying competitiveness has subtly informed my coaching in the past and kept me from simplifying sports into concepts that young kids can understand and enjoy more fully.

In addition to the introductory course, the site has sections that include resources on inclusion, resources sorted by various topics and sport specific resources. The array of sports included is deep and while I don’t ever see myself coaching handball, I now know where to find the coaching education and certification process should I ever change my mind.

This week I begin my fourth season coaching this group of kids. With some experience and confidence, I feel good about how the season will play out. And as I did my pre-season research to put together some practice plans, I was grateful to have additional resources to rely on this year.

Even with a better equipped coach my team is unlikely to inspire a movie about a group of kids able to win a prominent tournament as a collective of underdogs. But I am better situated to help them have fun doing something active, which will hopefully encourage them to keep on playing.

 

Christian Dashiell
Tinybeans Voices Contributor

Christian is a dad to two adopted daughters and two biological sons. He co-hosts "Imperfect Dads: A Parenting Podcast" and writes about adoption, parenting, race and culture. He spends his free time honing his BBQ Jedi skills, which means he usually smells delicious.

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We Teach Our Kids Cursive—but Can They Actually Read It?

By Maggie McComb

One sunny fall morning, I watched my daughter tear open a birthday present, eager to unearth the mysterious goodies hidden inside.

“Here,” she said, tossing the card in my direction. “Could you read this to me?”

I paused for a moment. This exact scene had played out numerous times across birthdays, holidays, even reading penpal letters.

I shook my head. “No. Read it yourself.”

“I can‘t understand it,” she replied.

I studied the card once again. What? Was it written in Greek?

For years, like many parents do, I focused on making sure my daughter’s handwriting was straight, clean and as legible as possible. We perfected every descender and closed every ‘a’ so it wouldn’t resemble a ‘u’ and so on. After that we progressed to cursive but quickly gave our attention to typing skills. After all, schools across the country had started dropping cursive from their curriculums entirely.

Nearly every state in America has adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative from 2010, which seeks to establish consistent educational standards across the U.S. and ensure high school graduates are prepared to enter college. The standards for English Language Arts include core topics of reading, writing and language and a modern section called “media and technology”. This component includes keyboard skills, but does not mandate cursive handwriting.

Spencerian script was the standard cursive writing st‌yle in the U.S. from the mid 1800s through the early 1900s. It was then simplified into the Palmer Method around the 1920s, followed by D’Nealian cursive, which students learn today. Yet the use of cursive declined overall as people first shifted to typewriters and then to personal computers. Public school instruction of cursive in the U.S. has steadily declined since the 1970s, but handwriting, penmanship and cursive continue to remain hot topics among educators and lawmakers across the nation.

Some applauded the Common Core’s move into modern times while others lamented the death of decorative penmanship. But recently, in 2016, Alabama and Louisiana passed laws mandating cursive proficiency in public schools. By doing so, they became the newest of over a dozen states now requiring cursive for 3rd graders and up.

What changed? Are parents and teachers growing sentimental about their own upbringing? Are we rebelling against the current digital shift in a grassroots back-to-basics swing to simpler, more analog times?  Even if nostalgia spurred the changes, science is there to back it up.

An article published in Psychology Today says “…learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development.” Brain scans reveal activated neural circuitry when children print letters and then read them out loud, but the same effect does not occur when the letters are typed. The swoopy, connected st‌yle of cursive is even more demanding than printing and creates a greater neural response in both hemispheres of the brain due to it’s artistic nature.

“Cursive is also more likely to engage students by providing a sense of personal st‌yle and ownership,” the Psychology Today article explains. More and more often, today’s youngest generations struggle with hand writing correspondence and creating their own personalized signatures. As today’s youth grew up without writing in cursive, they lost the ability to read it as well. Could the decline of handwriting sever our ties to the past, to our history, to ourselves?

My daughter never had trouble reading typed materials, but if I put a handwritten document in front of her, her eyes would glaze over. The perfect schoolteacher handwriting from our cursive tracing books had done little to prepare her for real handwriting from real people.

I simply couldn’t fathom a future in which my daughter would be incapable of understanding Great Grandma Vi’s apple pie recipe, family genealogy or the Declaration of Independence. But what could we do?

A Google search for “cursive handwriting” gave dozens of search results for tracing workbooks. Another search for “cursive instruction” produced YouTube tutorials for calligraphy. Adding specific keywords such as “how to practice reading people’s handwriting” prompted solutions for ADHD kids and how to effectively teach writing skills. A proper resource didn’t seem to exist.

Thanks to the global community that is Facebook, I rallied friends, family and even strangers to contribute samples of their everyday handwriting for our cause. Using my daughter as a sounding board, we combed through nearly 200 writing images to select our favorite five dozen based on their legibility (or lack thereof), uniqueness and beauty. The short paragraphs came to us from all corners of the world, from Japan to Peru and from right- and left-handed writers, all genders and all ages.

These samples, along with a sprinkling of history and terminology, have been organized into Handwriting: A Study of Penmanship in the Digital Age, an easy-to-read, fact-filled supplement for classroom instruction and home-based reading practice. The content is entirely comprised of animal facts and is suitable for all ages.

Maggie lives with her husband and "old soul" tween daughter in the Pacific Northwest. She shares their travel adventures, field trips, and homeschool ideas from a city-based homestead. Maggie's first book, Handwriting: A Study of Penmenship in the Digital Age, is available on Amazon.

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