Concordia students head to Colorado to deliver Spanish Immersion Week activities

While many college students are resting and relaxing during spring break, three education majors from Concordia University will be volunteering at Messiah Lutheran School in Grand Junction, Colo., to conduct a Spanish Immersion Week for the school.

Junior Anna Kreis, Marengo, Iowa, and freshmen Amanda Schroeder, Stevens Point, Wis., and Alexa Marquardt, Bel Air, Md., have planned lessons to introduce kindergartners through eighth graders to the Spanish alphabet and numbers and to share some of the Spanish culture through food, clothing and music. The Concordia students have even created a skit featuring puppets to perform during chapel.

“I am hoping that this experience will spark an interest in Spanish for the children,” said Schroeder. “If they walk away from this week excited about Spanish and interested in the language, we will have accomplished our goal.”

Messiah Lutheran principal, Neal Kaspar, hopes to make this an annual event. “It started with addressing a problem of not being able to easily fit Spanish into our regular curriculum,” explains Kaspar. “So, we came up with this Immersion Week format. We have a long range goal of going beyond the current academic year with an immersion program each year that would focus on a different topic/discipline. The thought is that after nine years at Messiah, each student would walk away with exposure to nine unique topics.” An advantage, Kaspar feels, of working with students from Concordia is that they can not only share topical information but also “offer the daily Christian nurture.”