Our bilingual assistants are indispensable to the success of our programs. Each summer, they plan and execute co-curricular activities and support our students, faculty, and staff. In this article, three of our bilingual assistants share about what they love most about working at the School of Japanese.
PhD student Shahriar Akhavan Tafti’s summer at our German School “rewired his brain,” and “changed his very being.”
For Yale PhD student Michelle Keefe, who is typically very talkative, entering the German School at Level 1 was a daunting prospect. In the end, she was surprised to find that her impulse to communicate overrode her lack of language.
| by Marin Howell
Middlebury Union High School 2017 alum Meigan Clark is back in town this summer taking part in the inaugural class of a new Master of Arts in Teaching program offered through the Middlebury Language Schools. The program offers participants a secondary teaching license in modern languages valid for teaching 7-12 grades in public school systems around the country.
For Mike Finn, “a fervent disciple of the Middlebury method,” one summer at the Language Schools turned into three.
| by Colby Bittner
Colby Bittner reflects on her 8-week summer as an immersion student at our School of Japanese, concluding: “It wasn’t all fun and games, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but I might dare to say that I have not only grown as a person from my experience at the summer program; I have also gained an appreciation and love for learning languages that will last a lifetime.”
With the consistent support of her classmates and the dedicated faculty and staff of our Portuguese School, Chelsea Maxwell saw her language skills improve every day. She can now confidently hold a conversation or read a book in Portuguese.
Thanks to our 24/7 immersion environment, returning School of Japanese immersion student Zachary Brothers was able to make incredible progress and gain a thorough understanding of Japanese that he had previously been unable to achieve in his prior study of the language.
| by Ian Curry
The first students at Middlebury College’s summer Language Schools arrived on Friday, June 20. This summer, over 1,400 students and 300 faculty from all over the world will be living at Middlebury College, Bennington College, and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) in Monterrey, California.
Julia Driscoll, a dual-degree graduate student in International Human Rights and MSW at the University of Denver, uses the newfound confidence she gained at our School of Spanish to better connect with the refugees with whom she works.
