Spanish is the overwhelming language choice of Wisconsin students

There are students in Wisconsin learning Hebrew, Ho-Chunk, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Menominee and Ojibwe.

But in analyzing the teaching in Wisconsin of what’s come to be known as world languages, there really are two worlds.

Spanish. And everything else.

Of the state’s 421 school districts, 132 — essentially one in three — offer students just one language, Spanish. Of the rest, 98 offered two languages, 74 offered three, 49 offered four, 63 offered five or more, and some did not provide data, according to Chris Bucher, communications officer for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

To get a sense of how Spanish dwarfs all other languages, it is the choice of 290,864 K-12 students statewide as of the 2022-23 school year, the most recent data available. The next highest: French, with 38,818 students. In other words, Spanish is taught to seven-and-a-half times more students.

Filling out the top five most popular languages statewide are: German, with 12,036 students; American Sign Language, 6,450; and Chinese, 4,862.

To some degree, that makes sense, because Spanish is far and away the most common language spoken in the U.S. after English. But after that, Asian languages — forms of Chinese, Tagalog (Filipino), and Vietnamese are spoken at higher rates than European languages.

The state mandates that districts offer at least one language in grades 7-12, and Bucher said “most” are in compliance. There is no language mandate to graduate, although individual districts can enact that requirement.

But for those who do immerse themselves in a language, there’s a proven payoff.

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Why is it important to learn another language?

Learning another language can help with career development, said Appleton Area School District World Language Coordinator Kelly Leopold.

“When you think about work later on, people who are bilingual instead of monolingual have a higher average salary and greater career opportunities,” Leopold said.

Another benefit is brain development, according to Milwaukee Public Schools’ World Languages/Immersion Curriculum Specialist Solmaris Gonzalez Chico.

“The more languages you have in your brain, the more brain you use. That’s why it actually helps students with solving problems because, of course, learning a new language you have to problem solve because in your head, it’s like: Oh wait, how do we say this?” Gonzalez Chico said.

Critical thinking is yet another skill that learning a language can help develop, she said.

“You’re actually making sense of maybe new vocab or maybe new items and you’re going between language one and language two,” said Gonzalez Chico. You’re going “back and forth, making sense of it.”

Learning another language also helps with learning about how to interact with people of different cultures in a responsive and respectable way, according to Green Bay Area Public School District curriculum coordinator of world language Kelly Votava.

“There’s such a benefit to that as well,” Votava said.

Finally, one of the best benefits of learning a second language is that it improves a student’s skills in their first language, said Leopold of Appleton.

“It’s assisting reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar skills, as well as those interpersonal skills as I mentioned before, which are those conversational skills,” Leopold said.

There’s been an evolution in how languages are taught

Leopold said when she first started teaching world languages, the focus was on rote memorization and repetition.

Now it’s about the application of skills.

“So it’s not about memorizing a list of vocabulary terms. It’s about interacting with their teacher and their peers in the classroom and using the language,” said Leopold.

The idea is to share the language in a personal way.

“It’s not about how to conjugate a verb in ten different sentences,” she said. “It’s about being able to have that conversation or present on something or interpret it where the tense is used and you maybe didn’t have to form it or you were able to form it with your resources, but it wasn’t perfect, but you were able to communicate.”

Leopold also said the amount of people going into teaching languages has changed over the years too. She said when she was first hired in the Appleton Area School District in 1999, there were more than 50 world language teachers. Now it’s down to 30.

But she acknowledged that decline is also occurring in core subjects.

Andrea Behn, a French teacher at Janesville Parker High School and president of the Wisconsin Association for Language Teachers, said in an informal survey of 70 members, only one said there was an increase in world language enrollment.

“Every district is going to be really different,” Behn said. “Then you look at bigger cities like Janesville and Appleton and Madison and then smaller districts that can only afford to have one language. A total variety of reasons, but I see enrollment going down all over the state,” she said.

Behn said she’s heard students tell her they don’t want to take more world language classes because they did not want to be world language teachers. She said that’s a mistake.

“Sometimes, it’s just developing as a kind human,” Behn said.

She said it can help to realize where a person is coming from, “culturally or linguistically,” to realize there’s more going on than initially is apparent.

Behn said “there is a massive need” in Wisconsin for those who can speak other languages.

“Businesses can’t seem to find enough of them. I don’t know if the word is out on that. I know I talk about it all the time and I can’t imagine there’s not a world language teacher who mentions this once a week. People want to hire people with language abilities,” she said.

In the 2022-23 school year, Milwaukee Public Schools reported enrollments in American Indian, American Sign Language, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, Bucher said. Bucher said smaller districts often use virtual school course offerings to provide access to a diversity of other languages.

“Some districts have begun to offer classrooms in which students are engaged in guided, but independent, learning of less commonly taught languages such as Arabic and Russian,” Bucher said.

School districts statewide offer varying language classes.

For example, the Greendale School District offers Spanish beginning in kindergarten and running through 12th grade. In high school, it also has German and American Sign Language options.

The New Berlin School District offers Spanish and French in person and Latin and Mandarin online in grades seven through 12. High school students can take other languages through the Early College Credit Program, which allows them to get credit for taking college classes.

The Green Bay Area Public School District offers French and Spanish beginning in middle school. At the high school level, the district offers Spanish at all of its high schools, French at three of its high schools, Chinese at three of its high schools and American Sign Language at one of its high schools.

Green Bay’s highest enrolled language is Spanish, followed by American Sign Language.

“Even though it’s only offered at one school, it’s our second highest language. We have different universities in the state that also have really good ASL programs, so students are able to then continue with their learning after high school when they’re at higher levels,” said Votava.

The Appleton Area School District offers French and Spanish at the middle and high school levels. The district also offers the K-5 Appleton Bilingual School and it will also be opening a Hmong American immersion school in fall 2025.

All of that is a reflection of the world students are graduating into.

More than 100 languages are spoken in Wisconsin alone. That’s one of the reasons educators dropped the phrase “foreign languages” in favor of the more inclusive and welcoming world languages. And 350 languages are used by students and their families nationwide, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.