Thank you so much to Kellie Henegar, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Kaskaskia College, for joining me to share our dual credit partnership!
I began teaching dual credit Spanish in 2002. At that time, all students received 16 credit hours for completing 4 years of high school Spanish. As the program has grown and developed over the years, we have changed to a more realistic 8 hours for every student and 4 additional for the IL State Seal of Biliteracy. It’s been such a great experience working with Kaskaskia College and Kellie and I wanted to share our path with you! If you’ve ever been interested in starting or even updating your own Dual Credit program, here are the things we’ve been up to and the way they’re impacting our students (and students from our area schools).
Let us know if you have any questions!
Hi Carrie
Firstly, thanks so much for this video and syllabus info on dual enrollment. I am looking at starting a Dual enrollment course with our local community college. Our school has a connection already, which is great. I am aiming to use your Huellas Curriculum. I have a few questions maybe you can clarify for me?
1) On the course syllabus that you shared for Kaskaskia College you define ‘Span 101’ as for students who have not taken Spanish before. (the syllabus is from 2021 – and I really appreciate your sharing this). However, it seems to me that the curriculum is aimed at students with previous language experience – more of a novice-high / intermediate-low course. The course at our local community college that is already offered is a Spanish III level. I do not know if I can offer a Spanish 101, but I will ask them. Can you please give me some information on why/how you offer a Spanish 101 course using the Huellas currciulum for Spanish 3/4s in high school?
2) The curriculum has 16 units (mostly from Huellas) and 4 novels. This is a year long course, right? It my school, we have Spanish 4 days a week for 50 min. It will definitely take me a year to teach this. Please clarify, if you have written this syllabus for 1 semester or for the full year. On your Kaskaski syllabus it says “This course is the first of a two-semester sequence of courses designed for students with no prior knowledge of Spanish.”
Thank you so much for this vide and info on dual enrollment. We are hoping to get this happening next school year.
Gracias,
Profe Kat
1. I had the wrong 101 syllabus in there! We are only doing two readers and 8 units in the first semester. This is just our working draft, we will have our formal 24-25 documents as soon as the college gets our syllabus builder ready (so the date is from a previous copy). We do not give credit for Spanish 1 or 2. The state does not like giving college credit to 15 year olds, I think… so we have, in years past, given 101 for Spanish 3 and 102 for Spanish 4. This year, we are expanding to offer 16 semester hours (but they’ll be 101 and 102 for level 3 and then 203 and 204 for level 4). Since we are dual enrollment, we have to use the same syllabus skeleton as the college classes… so what I have in there as units is all I can change. Kids CAN come to the college classes knowing no language but they are still expected to get to Intermediate Low/Mid at the end of 4 semesters. (that’s not possible fyi) We are allowed (as adjunct faculty) to teach any way we want, which I love. I am not tied to any textbook or online program.
2. I had the wrong 101 in there, so I think it will look more realistic when you see it now. In the 100 year, we do 4 readers and about 15 units. In the 200 year, we do the same.
There is ZERO comparison between high school and college Spanish courses. This is very important to note. Kids who come into Spanish 100s/200s in college have often had a year or two of prior study. If not, they are often quickly overwhelmed by how fast it moves to try to cover all 3,000 verb tenses and moods in 4 semesters. Knowing this in advance really helps as you start to plan with the community college. If you can set realistic goals (we tried to do this with our course goals), then it can work out to be a situation that benefits both sides!!
I’m in a rural school new to me. Is there any benefit to me trying to do the STAMP test this spring for my few native speakers and high flyers? I’m not sure how much STAMP costs nor if it is recognized in community colleges in my area. I really would love to get this recognition for those few students before they graduate but not sure if I will figure it all out in time.
Absolutely! Your state likely has a seal of Biliteracy program and theglobalseal.com offers a separate program that is recognized by a growing number of universities as 2 years of language credit. The stamp price is quantity based. We paid about $21 per test last year to test 78 kids!