UA Students Bring World Experiences to Area Schools

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A group of students at The University of Alabama holds the whole world in their hands, and luckily for some Tuscaloosa middle school students, they’ve been sharing it.

These UA students are members of the Alabama International Relations Club who share their passion for foreign affairs with the community through the club’s Tuscaloosa Initiative for Language Education program.

Currently offered at Duncanville Middle School and Davis-Emerson Middle School, the TILE program students from UA teach the middle schoolers about languages and cultures from around the world. The program caters specifically to rural students who may not have traveled outside of Tuscaloosa County or the state.

Zachary Knight, a UA sophomore studying international relations from Dallas, Texas, has been a member of the AIRC since his freshman year and serves as program director for TILE. He said that the middle school students’ knowledge of foreign languages and cultures is often limited before the TILE sessions begin. Once these middle school students begin to form a major interest in the languages, however, they often develop a strong desire to travel, study abroad and learn more about foreign affairs on the whole.

“The idea of TILE is to introduce the students to new languages. I took language courses at my middle school, so I know that having a program like TILE in Tuscaloosa would give these students a great experience,” Knight said.

The majority of TILE tutors are members of the AIRC, and all are taking classes either at the intermediate or advanced level of their foreign language studies at UA. The languages that are currently taught at the TILE tutoring sessions are Spanish, French, German and Italian, and native speakers are available to tutor German and French.

“German seems to be the most popular language with students,” Knight said. “The students have tutoring sessions once a week for the other three languages, but our tutors teach German twice a week.”

During each session, tutors are encouraged to hand out word puzzles, show videos and maps or listen to music to introduce new aspects of the cultures to the class. Tutors can also give one to two quizzes per semester that are incorporated into the middle school teacher’s curriculum.

To increase the students’ engagement even more, Knight said that the classes never learn the same language two semesters in a row. This allows for the greatest level of language exposure for the students.

“We like to give a variety of choices to the students so they have options on what they want to take in high school if they decide to continue their language education. This way, they’ll already know what foreign language they enjoy most,” he said.

TILE has received plenty of positive feedback from the middle school students and teachers, so Knight and other members of the AIRC plan to continue expanding the program. The expansion of the program began this year with doubling the number of languages offered to students and bringing the program to a second middle school. Knight said he hopes to take advantage of this momentum to bring TILE to more schools and add Portuguese as a fifth language.

In addition to the TILE program, AIRC members have participated in World Model United Nations conferences, including the 2011 conference held in Singapore with more than 2,200 delegates from universities around the world.