May 11, 2007

Many languages announced

May 10 Community Night

at Valley View Middle School

Valley View Middle School's daily news program,"The View from Valley View," had a different sound and look the week of May 6-11.  Leading up to the school's Community Night, on Thursday, May 10, anchor teams read the news in a different language each morning.

 "We added more graphics and text to the screen to help interpret what the news anchors were saying," said Media Director Mary Childs.  Announcements that students must understand were done in English, she added.

Community Night brought students and families to Valley View Middle for music, food, and multicultural exhibits that celebrate the diversity of the school's students and staff.

The week's lineup of multilingual newscasters included: 

Monday's news was read in Spanish by Ana Colo-Gonzalez and Angelica Garcia .

On Tuesday, Aakash Brown and Bakhtawar Chaudhary presented the news in Hindi, while Rosana Molina presented a commercial for Community Night in Swedish.

Wednesday's news was presented in Vietnamese by Thahn Bui and Phu Bui while Raquel Aamot read the Community Night commercial in Portuguese.  On Thursday Kasthuri Kamalanathan from Sri Lanka presented the news in Tamil and Dennis Ly spoke in Chinese while presented the Community Night commercial.  Friday's newscasters were Amelia Marquard and Mack Hanson using sign language.

The experience enables bilingual students to share their first language and helps English-only students experience the challenge of understanding another language.