School & District Management

Innovation: Gone Fishing

By Mary Ann Zehr — June 09, 2009 1 min read
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What I like best about this article from the Washington Post about how English-language learners from two different schools take a fishing trip together every year is the story about how the annual event got started.

Two decades ago, an English-as-a-second-language teacher at Bethesda Elementary School in Maryland had a student who had lived and survived in the jungles of Cambodia with his family for two years. She took her class of ELLs to a local lake so the boy could display his remarkable talent for fishing and teach his classmates.

Hence a tradition began that is still going on today.

It’s a legacy from a teacher who honored the life experience of a student, rather than just his academic knowledge. At the same time, according to the article, the fishing trip gives students a chance to learn some new vocabulary as well.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.