In order to offer students more language opportunities, Garland ISD began offering American Sign Language and Chinese Mandarin classes at all seven high schools this year. Spanish teacher Barbara Hanna says that the district personnel decided to add these two languages, because they thought it would benefit both the students and the schools.

“Sign language has become very popular,” Hanna said. “We’re getting ready to start an international business strand for graduation. We felt for business that Chinese would probably be very important.”

The classes are only available online due to the difficulty of finding certified teachers to teach the languages, Hanna said. For now, the district is contemplating whether or not they want to make the classes available in the classroom.

“They would like to start a dual language Chinese program at the elementary [level], so then it would come to the classroom,” Hanna said.

Students attending the classes go online and learn their chosen language using Skype to communicate with the teacher and to work on their assignments.

“The students are to be working individually on whatever assignments they’ve been given,” Hanna said. “They have the option of either asking the teacher to be available for tutorials or if they still need to finish an assignment.”

For now, students can take other language exams such as Vietnamese, Malayan, Arabic, Chinese and Urdu to earn their language requirements. The district plans on adding other foreign language classes in the future.

“One [language class addition] that I heard [superintendent] Bob Morrison talk about was Japanese,” Hanna said.

The online learning classes are designed to follow the student’s progress. Hanna says that the teachers try their best to improve the program.

“I think the best things about the language program are the teachers and their willingness to work together [to] try new things and just be open,” Hanna said.