Maia Goel – Spring 2021 Award Recipient
Our next Get Involved award recipient for the spring cohort is Maia Goel, a junior at Menlo-Atherton High School. For her project, she created Spanish Buddies, a spanish immersion program for local students. Read her project write-up below. Watch her interview here.
I created my program, “Spanish Buddies,” to help Spanish Immersion students in my city. I attended the program and wanted to find a way to give back. In Spanish Immersion, students learn Spanish throughout elementary school with complete immersion—in Kindergarten, every student, whether or not they already know the language, takes all of their classes in Spanish. Because of this, the “immersion” aspect of the program is key to its success.
In May 2020, I reached out to the program director, Ms. Girsky, to find out what I could do to help. I found that distance learning had severely diminished the “immersion” aspect of the program. Additionally, many students don’t speak Spanish at home, so they were having trouble practicing and keeping up with the language. As a program graduate, I know how difficult and frustrating it is to have to read, write, and learn in a second language without adequate support. I put together Spanish Buddies to match eighth grade or high school buddies to a group of Spanish Immersion elementary school students for fun, Spanish-only sessions. During the first summer, I had 80 students and 17 tutors, and received such positive feedback that I continued the program during the school year. Those sessions also ran very successfully, with over 100 students and 30 tutors. The program will be continuing this summer, and I’ve had 40 students sign up in just the first week. I plan to continue the program, including after I graduate from high school, and have recruited other students to take on leadership roles and continue the program when I’m gone.
Parents have told me the program and the tutors really helped their students make friends and benefit socially, especially because they were seeing their groups weekly for fun sessions, not purely academics. I’ve seen and been told how excited students get about their sessions. They try to join the sessions early and keep their buddies later because they’re having so much fun and don’t want to leave—and buddies are more than happy to continue! The program has really fostered positive connections between buddies and students. These social benefits are especially important during a pandemic when so many students were cut off from their friends and opportunities to make new friends. I’ve also seen increased confidence in speaking Spanish, even just during last year’s summer session, and I am confident that the program has achieved its intended goal and beyond; we’re now working on more ways to expand the program.
The buddies have also benefited. Not only have they been able to practice their Spanish—which is particularly useful for students, like me, who have completed all the Spanish classes at their school—but they also gained experience managing and connecting with younger students. Additionally, eighth grade students in advanced Spanish classes must complete community service hours in Spanish to earn the Biliteracy Attainment Award from our county. I remember the struggle of finding service opportunities, a problem only made worse by the pandemic, and therefore I also helped the eighth-graders by providing an opportunity to earn their hours.
I’ve grown in confidence through this program, as I created and have managed the program alone, from parents to students and tutors, for the past year. Prior to Spanish Buddies, I had limited experience with recruiting and managing students and talking to parents with a real semblance of authority. Now, I find myself significantly more capable and confident, from emails and phone calls with parents to instructing a college graduate who wants to help the program. I’ve also learned to be flexible. Not only do I have 3 sessions of my own each week—where we talk about everything from Harry Potter to the purpose of studying history—but I also spend hours each week problem solving. I've become adept at finding creative solutions for everyone, even when it initially seems impossible. Spanish Buddies is one of my proudest accomplishments.