We're proud to award our first Mini-Grant of the season, “I teach language at Tafolla Middle School, when this program started in the eighties it was the largest language program in the district, over time the program has diminished in participation. International night is a program that allows students to showcase what they have been learning to friends, family and the community. When I started teaching four years ago, the Japanese class only had 20 students in all three levels,” Jerry Romero, language instructor at Tafolla Middle School.

Now, Romero is teaching over 100 students in all levels. His class size is an indication of just how popular the language courses are. He also has an Asian Studies club that meets after school to discuss music and food and share the common interest with other likeminded students. "It has been our goal for students to start in sixth grade and continue their studies on to eighth grade so they can earn their language credits they need to graduate and graduate with the bilingual endorsement on their diploma," Romero continued. 

"It opens the student’s eyes to the world around them, most students do not have the opportunity to see outside of the their everyday. When you expose students to different languages, you expose them to different cultures and the worlds outside of their own," Romero stated. He is a San Antonio native and when he needed to take a language course he wasn’t extremely open to it, but when a student enrolled in his high school he saw that student struggle to learn English. He took that as an opportunity to befriend the student and started learning small phrases in hopes that the student wouldn’t feel so isolated with the language barrier. He taught himself Thai and opened up the avenue for communication with that classmate, after that moment, he fell in love with language and found his passion. “Language opens your eyes to a world you’d not been exposed to.”

Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, German and Russian are a few of the languages that students have the option of choosing as an elective while enrolled at Tafolla. Next month, Romero and other language instructors will showcase a calligraphy performance, "Traditions around the World" on Thursday, December 13 from 6:00p.m.-7:00p.m. This will be another opportunity to see the students showcasing the materials from the SAISD Foundation grant.