"Willkomen" reads a sign hanging in Marianne Harvey’s classroom. For 30 years, the Everett High School teacher has been giving students a hearty German welcome.
Although Harvey won’t be back come fall, she’s as excited about language study as any first-year teacher. Retirement awaits — and travel adventures with her husband, Jim.
First, she’ll make one last journey with the kids. This will be her ninth trip with Everett students in the German American Partnership Program, known as GAPP. Harvey and 19 German language pupils leave June 25 on a flight from Vancouver, B.C., to Frankfurt, Germany, and then on to Munich in the state of Bavaria.
They’ll stay with hosts from Everett High’s sister school, Realschule, in the town of Riedenburg. Twenty-eight students from that school, along with teacher Friedel Helmich, were in Everett in April.
Harvey, 53, is an outspoken advocate of foreign language study, believing it "makes the world a more peaceful place." Languages also open economic doors in a state where three out of five jobs are tied to world trade, she said.
Yet there are no foreign language requirements for students graduating from Washington’s public high schools, Harvey said — "none." Four-year colleges require two to three years of a foreign language for admission, but Harvey said only about a third of Everett High students take a language.
At some schools, Jackson High in the Everett district among them, students must study a language, but it’s not a state requirement. Ideally, Harvey favors language instruction in middle school, even elementary school.
Her parents were German immigrants who only spoke their native tongue with Harvey’s grandmother. "I grew up being a translator, but I forgot everything until I started German at Snohomish High School. Then it all came back," she said. "I really believe in early language learning.
"We need to improve, both the supply of teachers and the funding," added Harvey, a past president and current board member of the Washington Association for Language Teaching.
She’s discouraged by what she sees as a lack of support from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The state has cut a world languages supervisor position, resulting in what Harvey said is a "lack of coordination for students."
Also, the state’s Education Reform Act that brought standards called Essential Academic Learning Requirements — EALRS in teacher-speak — makes no mention of foreign languages. The statewide standards define "the basics" as reading, writing, communication, mathematics, science, social studies, the arts, and health and fitness.
While Harvey will no longer be in a classroom, she’s "looking for other avenues to continue advocating" for languages. But not yet. She’s busy shepherding 19 students through a life-changing summer.
One of those travelers is Saviya Hurley, 18, who studied third-year German and will graduate June 18. Saviya was awarded a $600 GAPP prize from the automaker DaimlerChrysler to help defray costs of the $2,200 trip.
In her prize-winning essay, Saviya wrote that she hoped to experience the German culture in a way she couldn’t learn from school. Studying language, she said, "gives you a different aspect of the world around you, and of how people live."
Harvey, ever the teacher, has her own vision for her students’ travels.
"I love it, after they’ve been over there, when they tell me, ‘I dreamed in German last night.’ "
Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
