UPTON – Julie Ahmed-Jussaume, World Language Instructor at Nipmuc Regional High School, has been honored by the Blackstone Valley Superintendent’s Consortium for adopting innovative strategies to drive student achievement in Spanish.
The Consortium’s Promising Practices in Education Award recognizes creative, inspiring, and student-centered instructional practices, which are shared with other educators in the Blackstone Valley. Awardees are nominated by the 13 superintendents in the Consortium in collaboration with principals and curriculum directors.
Mrs. Ahmed-Jussaume has worked at Nipmuc for 22 years, teaching multiple Spanish classes and the sophomore Spanish Immersion class. In recent years she has been using Acquisition Driven Instruction, which allows students to learn language and structures at different paces. Her approach takes into account the science behind how our brains acquire language naturally and that each individual acquires language and structures at a different pace.
Students develop their skills through regular activities so they speak and hear Spanish as much as possible. Students may interview one another, creating a classroom calendar, or recapping their weekend activities. Additionally, Mrs. Ahmed-Jussaume maintains a small library of beginner-level novels which further creates a language-rich environment for her students. Assessments of their learning are focused on her students’ growth and language proficiency achievements rather than past practices of grading homework and classwork.
Instruction often integrates learning about culture through the language, where she can include her experiences in both Latin America and Spain in classroom activities. One of the students favorite learning activities is when music plays a large role, including through “Locura de Marzo,” a March Madness style bracket of analyzing authentic/current Latin music.
“My students are able to understand and produce language in a meaningful way and at a level that I did not see in my first 15 years of teaching,” Mrs. Ahmed-Jussaume said. “I believe that the feeling of success students get when they see that they are able to write a paragraph in Spanish or communicate their opinion about a song is a huge motivator and makes me very proud of what they have accomplished.”
“We strive to give students the skills they need to become both global citizens and effective communicators,” Superintendent Maureen Cohen said. “Julie has always been at the forefront of innovative practices in our world language department, as well as our school community. A true teacher leader, Julie has transformed her classroom practice to one that immerses her students in the language from the moment they step into her room.”