Aboutus > Credit Program for High School

Credit Program for High School

Aarthi Krishnamoorthy

What triggered CTA into action ?

High school curriculum in this country involves a second language, which in California, may be Spanish, French or Chinese (offered in a limited number of schools).

Tamil is not one of the accredited languages. There is a large Tamil speaking community in California whose children did not have the opportunity to learn the language that their parents and family spoke at home.

When Mrs. Vetriselvi Rajamanickam was faced with a similar situation with her children she decided to explore the option of getting the appropriate accreditation to teach Tamil as a second language at high school. She also realized that teaching young children to learn their Mother Tongue would help them to develop confidence, self-esteem.

CTA Initiatives to accreditation for Tamil

CTA, with Mrs. Vetriselvi in the lead set to work immediately.

CTA contacted the Spanish and French teachers at Saratoga High School and also the parents in the Chinese Community in Saratoga to get all the necessary information which would help her in the quest to make Tamil as a credited second language at high school.

CTA had also contacted several important officials in the District Board of education and came in touch with Dr. Mary Stone, who is the Associate superintendent, Education Planning / Development. With Dr. Stone's guidance the basic qualifying conditions given below were clearly laid out and all the necessary papers submitted with the Board of education:

Syllabus / Curriculum for the credit program
Structure of the class
Books and other study materials

Approval

The approval was received in October 2003 from he Fremont Union School District to allow CTA to teach Tamil in public high schools at Cupertino and Sunnyvale.

CTA Approach

Curriculum

The focus of he entire curriculum includes the simultaneous development of basic vocabulary (noun, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.,) and he construction of sentences of varying degrees of complexity (form simple to more complex) and the ability to construct and write sentences in Tamil . This includes using the correct tense, count, gender or otherwise precise forms of various words.

Teachers

Dr. Sivakumar, who has extensive teaching experience (though not in Tamil) in several universities in the United States like Stanford, University of Houston, State University of NewYork, Buffalo for over 10 years was chosen as the leader of a team of teachers for the credit program.

The team included

Mrs. Nalayini Gunanayakam who has been actively involved in teaching Tamil for several years in the bay area Tamil community and who was involved with the CTA for teaching Tamil to Adults Mrs. Kavitha Senthilkumar who has been teaching Tamil at CTA for the level high school grade II Mrs. Aarthi Krishnamoorthy who has been teaching Tamil in CTA for the Pre-school level and elementary level.

Student Performance

The students have shown great enthusiasm and thirst for learning the language. Attending such a program helps them relate well with their families and increases the family bonding as mentioned by several parents.

They have consistently and categorically demonstrated the knowledge they have acquired in evaluation components. They have shown tremendous progress in terms of grasping the nuances of the language.

Graduation List

CTA would send the list of students who graduate from the credit program course, at the end of the school year, to he District Officer who will make the necessary arrangement to have the course credit posted to the student's transcript.

Summary

CTA, with the continued support from the school district, Dr. Mary Stone, the community, the teachers and the students, would be unrelenting in its strive to improve the quality of education it imparts to very high levels.