K12Translate Blog

K12Translate Awards Three Schools/Districts through their Inaugural Translation Grant Program

leslie — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:20:51 +0000

With so many schools and districts more than deserving of one of K12Translate’s Translation Grants, narrowing the choices down to three was quite a feat! We are truly thankful for all that applied to the program and wish we could have extended an award to each of you. It is with much excitement now that we announce the three winners of our first annual Translation Grant Program: Denver’s Place Bridge Academy, Washington state’s Central Valley School District and Illinois’ Rock Island School District #41. Here’s a brief snapshot of the three recipients:

With students hailing from 30 different countries and speaking 40+ languages, K12Translate is excited to support the grand prize winner, Place Bridge Academy, and their efforts to bridge the communication gap and strengthen ties with their ELL families.

Central Valley School District (CVSD) comprises of 12,400 students speaking over 21 languages. CVSD will use their grant to reach their ELL students and families by translating much-needed documents related to their special-education services and other core materials.

And finally, faced with a rapidly growing refugee population and limited resources, Rock Island School District will use their translation grant for expanding their communication efforts with each of their diverse communities.

Stay tuned to learn how the three winners will use their translation grants, and what kind of impact it will have on their students and communities—we look forward to passing on the good news!

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

The K12Translate Family Gives Back

leslie — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:43:30 +0000

All of us here at K12Translate and the viaLanguage family believe that ensuring language access through translation is really about building community. That’s what effective communication makes possible. I guess you could say we sort of have a community-minded focus just by virtue of the work we do.

So, it would just seem to make sense that we feel a natural desire to give back. And I wanted to take this post to applaud all the people in the K12Translate family, and beyond, who find the time and make the effort to give back during the year. Cheers to all of you!

Are you looking for some philanthropic ideas for your company? Here are few organizations and efforts we support:

Humane Society – One paid day is donated to each employee to support their favorite non-profit organization. The company also offers an annual team volunteer opportunity. This year it’s the Humane Society—because pets are also part of the community!
Operation Cornbread – We support Sisters of the Road Café in Portland, Ore., as part of that organization’s annual matching program, Operation Cornbread, which keeps food coming to the needy during the peak summer months.
Annual Translation Grants - We offer in-kind translation grants for organizations reaching out to limited English proficient (LEP) communities, both Healthcare and K12.
Heifer International – We provide annual support to a needy family by purchasing and donating a cow. Learn more about this unique program in an earlier post by viaLanguage.

As the Oregon Lottery once said, though I paraphrase, “Your odds of winning are 550,000 to one—significantly higher than if you don’t play.” And it’s the same with making a difference. Act and you can help.

Keep Learning & Keep Giving Back!
Leslie
K12Translate

Perhaps PPS Can Be a Lesson to All School Districts

leslie — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:21:19 +0000

I came across an interesting story right from K12Translate’s home state (and city!) of Portland, Oregon. As reported by KATU News, a local Latina activist by the name of Marta Guembes went undercover to investigate Portland Public Schools’ progress in communicating with non-English speaking parents.

Just last year, PPS was required by the state Department of Education to improve communication with non-English speaking parents in order to meet state and federal laws. With 10 percent of the PPS parent population not speaking English, and over 72 languages represented, Guembes set out to see if the district was making strides towards better communication with these populations.

Guembes, undercover as a Spanish-speaking immigrant, called 85 Portland schools over two days. As you can read in her report, the results were not favorable as over one-third of the schools called provided no assistance or information to her, simply responding with “no español.” The remaining schools, according to Guembes, did “not meet the protocol” either.

Now we at K12Translate are big fans of school districts in any state, and we truly understand and appreciate the many barriers there are to providing language access to increasingly diverse student and parent populations. With budgets drastically shrinking, and classrooms rapidly growing, achieving this is challenging at best. But with a bit of planning and the right translation tools and teams, not being another lesson like PPS is possible, and very worth it.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

A Boost to Help Build the Home-School Connection

Maggie — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:29:56 +0000

We at K12Translate believe that bridging the language gap is key to improving and increasing parental involvement of your ESL/ELL students. To further this cause and support schools or districts pursuing similar initiatives, we are excited to announce our first annual K12 Translation Grant Program! This unique, in-kind donation program will award a total of $2000 in translations to schools or districts meeting the eligibility requirements. The deadline is June 15th, 2010 so visit the K12 Translation Grant Program page now to apply!

Best of luck, and keep learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

Improving Educational Outcomes for English Language Learners

Maggie — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:49:39 +0000

With many states facing dramatic increases in their ELL populations, The Working Group on ELL Policy, a team of leading ELL researchers and policy experts, has published a report on how to best keep pace with the growing needs of English Language Learners. Focused on improving educational outcomes for ELLs, the report is aimed to inform lawmakers who are discussing reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind.

The report offers recommendations to improve five key areas of ESEA, making the new policy much more comprehensive than it is today. The proposed changes not only emphasize access to high-quality teachers for ELLs, but also suggest backing schools’ efforts to teach bilingual education. The report recommends that the amount of time it takes ELLs to learn English should be taken into account, therefore allowing the students to have adequate time and resources to develop proficiency and academic progress. It is also suggested that states should employ consistent identification and classification of their ELL students, as well as the length and type of services for them.

With increasingly diverse student populations growing faster than ever, it may be time to revisit our policies to ensure the best strategies and educational opportunities are available for our English Language Learners.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

Cultural Competence is Key to Fighting Childhood Obesity

Maggie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:28:53 +0000

Childhood obesity is growing at an alarming rate, currently affecting one in three of the nation’s students. Unfortunately, this epidemic is disproportionately high among Hispanics, bumping the rate of obesity to nearly two out of three children in certain student populations.

As reported by KVUE News Washington Bureau, First Lady Michelle Obama has launched her “Let’s Move” campaign in an effort to help schools fight this epidemic. Keeping the high rates of childhood obesity amongst Latinos in mind, the campaign’s first meeting focused on culturally-specific solutions for this community.

With staple foods in the Latino diet that may not math up with that of Westerners, the task force acknowledged the value in culturally-attuning their dietary recommendations. One solution, as put forth by Ian Smith, founder of The 50 Million Pound Challenge, was to make a culturally relevant food pyramid using items that commonly exist in many Hispanic cultures.

Another example, as showcased by our parent company, viaLanguage, involves producing culturally resonant health program materials as they did for the Health Plan of San Mateo. By adapting the program’s word-find puzzles and children’s melodies like “Baa, Baa Black Sheep” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the end product was made much more culturally meaningful. Click here to read the entire case study.

Changing any child’s diet is not an easy task, but by incorporating culturally familiar foods, activities and lessons, your efforts will hold a lot more weight in helping the Latino youth maintain theirs.

Keep learning and stay healthy!
Leslie
K12Translate

Tips to Stretch Your District’s Translation Budget

Maggie — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 05:32:03 +0000

A recent report published by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates the number of immigrant students to increase from 12.3 million in 2005 to 17.9 million in 2020, accounting for all the projected growth in the school-age population. With half of this population arriving from over 200 countries from around the world, stretching your dollars across additional languages is difficult at best. With the nation’s English language learner student population expected to grow so rapidly, it has never been more important to learn the tools and resources that will help you get the most out of your translation budget.

Fortunately, these issues and more will be addressed in K12Translate’s second installment of our 2010 webcast series, titled “Stretching Translation Dollars for Your District: Five Tips Including Translation Memory 101.” This FREE webinar will take place May 25th at 11:00 AM(PT), 2:00 PM(ET), and will teach you the basics of how translation is priced and what you can do to stretch your translation budget. You will also learn what translation memory is, and when it can save you 10%-25% off your district’s translations!

We hope you can join us!

Register here

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

Bridging More than Just the Language Gap with Immigrant and Refugee Students

Maggie — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:22:48 +0000

According to a 2009 publication by the Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools, it is estimated that children from immigrant and refugee families may constitute 30 percent of American students by 2015. Almost half of all foreign-born ELL students are from Mexico, while the other half are from over 200 countries from around the world.

Children who arrive in the country as immigrants and refugees often face significant challenges on top of learning a new language. In some cases, their departure to a new country is sudden, causing them to quickly leave behind friends, relatives and the comfort of their own culture. Enrolling in a new and different education system—or in some cases, entering formal schooling for the first time, can also pose as a challenge to both the student and the teacher. In addition, cultural differences in values, beliefs and attitudes about education can greatly impact their transition into a new school.

Supporting refugee and immigrant students may start in the classroom, but it does not stop there. Communication and involvement with the families and communities, especially in terms of recognizing their culture and experiences, will help you make great strides in the students’ scholastic success.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

Education Translation Trends

Maggie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:44:49 +0000

I’d like to extend a special thank you to all who participated in K12Translate’s recent Education Translation Trends Survey. We’ve tallied the results and I thought I’d share some of the highlights with our readers. Of course, you can download a free copy of the entire report here: Translation Trends Report

It may come as no surprise that communicating with and engaging limited English speaking students, parents and communities amidst shrinking budgets is the top concern for school districts in the 2010-2011 school year. Yet despite nearly half of the school districts reporting that limited budgets are their largest challenges in serving their ELL communities, 44 percent expect to see a decrease in the federal Title III funding that helps them serve these special populations.

Nearly 90 percent of districts reported that they regularly use the Internet for parent-student communications. However, despite nationally reported growth in social networking, only 12 percent of districts said they used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to build the home-school connection.

Read the entire report to see what your other districts are doing to reach their ever-growing LEP/ELL student and parent populations. Click here to download report.

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate

Develop Strategies for Avoiding Translation Traps

Maggie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:10:55 +0000

Among the myriad challenges facing the nation’s school districts is the mounting costs of their multilingual communications. Yet with over 20% of the U.S. population speaking a language other than English, ensuring that your school’s information be made available in a language your students and parents understand is critical. The high amount of information, forms and permissions that schools distribute often present a challenge to these non-native English speakers. And unfamiliarity with the American K-12 system can equally impact the ability of LEP/ELL parents to fully participate in their child’s education.

So how can schools ensure effective communications that truly reach their growing LEP populations? What can be done to keep translation quality high while staying within budget? As part of our free webinar series at K12Translate, we are offering an installment that directly addresses these issues. Titled “Avoiding Eight Translation Traps: Planning Multilingual Communication for Your District,” the webinar will take place 11:30 a.m. (PT) on April 6th and will explore a range of strategies for responding to today’s changing K12 environment.

We hope you can join us for this webinar!

Click here to register

Keep Learning!
Leslie
K12Translate