By Alex Dorian, Contributing Writer
Marlborough – Foreign language students from the 1LT Charles M. Whitcomb Middle School in Marlborough participated in the school's second annual World Language Festival on May 22 as a way to? educate others about different cultures from around the world.
Language teachers Jocelyn Demuth, Jill Jackson, Joan Conner, Nora Wagman and Qiong Liu organized the event last year to better promote the school's Language program, which was recently implemented into the school's curriculum.
“We brought the idea to the department last year and everybody saw the logic in it,” said Demuth. “There weren's really any hoops to jump through – bureaucracy free.”
The students, most of them in the seventh or eighth grade, were given the option of learning Spanish, French, Latin or Mandarin Chinese.
“The students learn a lot about working as a team and listening to a member's input,” said Wagman, who teaches French. “You see friendships forming, they'se happy, they'se engaged.”
The festival included presentations about contemporary French fashion trends, Argentinian cuisine, Chinese New Year, and Roman gladiator bouts.