This school year witnessed the debut of a new foreign language program, called Linguistic Excellence and Discovery, or LEAD!. The program was designed to recognize and support students who are interested in pursuing a rigorous foreign language course schedule.

“Several years ago, our colleagues in [the] science [department] had a good idea, which was to create ACES,” said Steve Dubrow, foreign language teacher and LEAD! program advisor. “I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I take that good idea, which seemed to be coming along nicely for our high school students, and apply many of those principles to foreign languages?’”

The LEAD! program has several course requirements, including taking at least two foreign languages, one of which the student must pursue up through the AP level, and completing a major project senior year.

Dubrow has been working with his colleagues to finalize the LEAD! program concept. The department also worked closely with Assistant Principal Christopher Merrill, who was responsible for naming the program with the acronym LEAD!.

“Our [foreign language] department as a whole [had] submitted several drafts,” said Dubrow. “Through our meetings we were able to submit a final to the department chair, our resource teacher, Karen Generose, who presented it to the Instructional Council.”

The WJ Instructional Council (IC) is a leadership group comprised of administrators, departmental resource teachers and chairs and student and parent representatives. Last summer, the IC approved the program and Dubrow has already been successful in starting it up this school year.

With the help of webmaster of the WJ website, Maria Limarzi, Dubrow has already gotten the LEAD! program’s information onto the school site. Additionally, in early January, Dubrow spoke to incoming freshmen about the program at an informational meeting.

Dubrow added that he is currently in the process of reviewing student applications. In considering the applications, he must take into account the students’ capabilities in fulfilling the program’s requirements.

“We thought that in order for students to be recognized for their achievements, we would have to make some serious demands,” said Dubrow.

Right now, the program is still in its beginning stages, but Dubrow hopes the program will grow over the next few years and become a larger community at WJ for the students interested in actively pursuing foreign languages.

One student, senior Maggie Gilligan, was partly the inspiration for LEAD!. Gilligan has taken a wide variety of foreign language classes during her middle and high school years, and has pursued many of them to advanced levels. This year, she is taking Chinese 3, AP Spanish Literature, AP Italian Language and also Introductory Arabic and Russian at Montgomery College. Additionally, she does French independent study for part of her school day as a follow-up to the AP French Language class she took last year.

“I’m super excited about [the LEAD! program],” said Gilligan. “ACES and APEX encourage the learning of sciences and English, and now they have the same thing for foreign languages. There are kids that work really, really hard at foreign languages, and they deserve the same recognition as a student who is working hard at science. There is no subject that is better than the other; they all have their merits.”

Gilligan also expressed how she sees the expansion of foreign languages not only at the high school level, but in middle schools as well.

“Even the middle school language programs are already changing,” said Gilligan. “I know they started offering Italian classes at North Bethesda [Middle School] and just last year they started offering Chinese.”

The county only requires students to take two years of foreign language, and generally, colleges like to see four. Gilligan expressed that she felt the program would be effective in encouraging foreign language learning.

“[LEAD!] could get students thinking ‘Okay, maybe I could start another foreign language,’ or even AP Art History or AP [Human Geography], something related to foreign language,” said Gilligan. “It can encourage starting foreign languages earlier, or taking multiple foreign languages in middle school. I know that I did, but that was definitely an anomaly.”