Middle School Spanish students improve their language skills and serve our community at the same time.  

“It was a creative way to learn,” Alex Eagle ’27 said. 

During their latest student-driven project, Form I students learned about and discussed community and charities. They picked up new, useful vocabulary along the way! 

“They were asked to analyze authentic text by reading local charity organizations' websites in Spanish. The boys were proud to work as a team and take the lead in helping others in need. They were learning and practicing Spanish along the way,” their teacher, Jeremy Norman ’92, explained.  

The students are collecting donations for The Greentree Shelter (GTS) run by the National Center for Children and Families. GTS is the largest emergency family shelter in Montgomery County, and it was created to assist children and parents who face sudden homelessness.  

Students made promotional posters to hang on the walls of the Middle School. They also created a video to share what they learned and call for donations.  

“I do think supporting the global and local community is very important because I’m a very fortunate person, and I don’t have many struggles with getting necessities. But there are a lot of people that do, so I think giving back is very important,” Eagle said.  

“I think helping the community helps us learn about different people and where they come from,” Malachi Reynolds ’27 added.  

This project is a different approach to learning language according to their teacher, Jeremy Norman ’92.  

“It was certainly great to see them get behind doing something good for the community. The assessments were not your traditional language assessments with vocabulary or a grammar focus, but rather they were tasked to answer essential/thinking questions like ‘why does one want to serve the local community, ‘why do people want to serve the global community’.” Norman said.