80 foreign teachers arrive in Louisiana to teach at language immersion schools

Photo courtesy DepositPhotos.

Schools across Louisiana will have 80 teachers from around the world in classrooms this upcoming school year as part of an exchange program that bolsters the state’s K-12 foreign language immersion programs.

The teachers arrived in Baton Rouge for an orientation Wednesday with Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, state education officials, the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) and diplomats from France and Spain.

The educators hail from France, Belgium, Canada, Senegal, Cameroon, Lebanon, Spain and Mexico and will begin teaching in K-12 schools under Louisiana’s International Associate Teacher Program. Louisiana is home to several foreign language immersion schools at which students receive instruction in Spanish, French or Mandarin Chinese.

“We are very grateful for all the new international teachers,” CODOFIL Executive Director Peggy Feehan said in a press release. “It is not easy to leave your country, pack up your life, move across the Atlantic Ocean, and start a new adventure, but the lucky ones are the Louisiana children who will be in their classrooms, learning in French and Spanish, and at the same time, learning a different culture. This will enrich their lives and make them better global citizens.”

The state’s International Associate Teacher Program falls under the U.S. State Department’s J-1 Exchange Teacher category, which offers visas for a three-year period with the opportunity to extend for an additional two years. CODOFIL and the Louisiana Department of Education sponsor the teachers and place them in host schools under a yearly contract that can be renewed during the visa period. The program is not used to fill job shortages.

CODOFIL is a state agency in the Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, under the lieutenant governor, tasked with the development and promotion of the French language in Louisiana.

d