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Scholarships for Future Language Educators
Scholarship Opportunities for Students
The SCOLT Board is excited to announce new scholarship opportunities for high school and college students!
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The Ken Stewart Future Language Educator Scholarship has been available for high school seniors since 2019. This is a $1000 scholarship awarded to a high school senior in the SCOLT region who wants to become a language teacher. The funds can be used as needed for tuition, books, or other college expenses. Four very deserving students have received the scholarship to date! See a updates from a few of them in this newsletter.
The Board is excited to announce a second scholarship for a high school senior! Vista Higher Learning will be sponsoring a $1000 scholarship in each of the five regions, beginning in 2023. How exciting to be able to provide two scholarships for aspiring language educators! And to add to the good news, Vista Higher Learning will be sponsoring a $1000 scholarship for a current college student in the region who demonstrates passion, leadership, and promise as a future language teacher.
With the current teacher shortage and a critical need to encourage students to become educators, the SCOLT Board is extremely appreciative of the ability to provide these opportunities for high school and college students!
Applications and detailed information will be available in the Fall. Watch the SCOLT website, Facebook, and Twitter feeds for more information.
Cody Smith, who is studying multiple languages at Western Kentucky University, is teaching Arabic and ESL this summer. He is involved in many ways at his university and is already contributing to the profession!
Virginia Jackson, who received the scholarship in 2020, is doing well in her college studies in Georgia. She says, “I love UGA!! This summer I will actually be studying in Granada, Spain, for a month!” We look forward to hearing more about her studies later this year.
Miriam Smith received the Ken Stewart Future Language Educator scholarship in 2021. She is attending Davidson College in North Carolina. See below an update regarding her first year in college and her current adventures!
Hello SCOLT Board and Members: I hope you are well. I just wanted to reach out and update you on my experience at Davidson College. I really enjoyed my first semester. I took General Psychology, Spanish, Arabic, and a math class. My professors were great and very encouraging, and the classes were wonderful. Arabic turned out to be one of my favorite classes. It was fun to sort of start over with a language, and Arabic is very different from anything I've studied before. Out of class, I had the opportunity to volunteer at a local elementary school. I taught Spanish to 2nd grade students once a week. Recently, I was hired as an Assistant Teacher in the Hispanic Studies Department, and I'm looking forward to working in the position this semester. I'll be continuing to study Arabic and psychology, and I'm taking a Spanish literature class. Also, my trip to El Salvador last summer was awesome. My host was an English teacher at a local school, and I went to school with her every day and helped out. I learned so much about being a teacher and how to teach a second language. She even let me make lesson plans and teach a couple of classes. Overall, It was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. Below are photos of me teaching the 2nd-graders in El Salvador and one of me writing in my Arabic classroom at Davidson. Thank you again for your support. I really appreciate it.
Best, Miriam Smith
May Update
I am still enjoying Davidson College in NC, and I'm excited for next semester. Right now, I'm in Spain, and I'll be here until the end of June. I have an internship. I'm working in a bilingual school and living with a host family. Here’s a photo of me and my host mom, Ana, at El Palacio de Magdalena in Santander, Spain.
