The Tennessee Language Center translated notices and informational documents about Monkey Pox into Spanish for the TN Department of Health. The information will be used by health departments across Tennessee.
You can read the Spring 2022 edition of Brighter Tennessee, UT’s Institute for Public Service magazine. It features a story about TLC’s work with Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope to train new recruits with limited English proficiency.
The Tennessee Language Center’s Summer Court Interpreter Workshop had 27 participants from 16 different counties and two states (TN and MS). Our students included a Metro Nashville Police Department officer who wanted to improve his interpreting skills in order to better assist the Hispanic community he serves, an Afghan refugee currently working as a Dari interpreter in community settings who wanted to expand his services to the legal field, and a polyglot African student who speaks English, Swahili, French, and Portuguese, who also wanted to take his interpreting skills to the next level. TLC’s Court Interpreter Workshop is an approved training program for court interpreters in the state of Tennessee consisting of 14 hours of training on the Tennessee court system, ethics and standards of practice, and interpreting skills.
Join us for our summer term of language classes. Register before June 27 to get 10% with our early bird discount*! Use Use code EARLYSM22.
Classes begin the week of July 11 and run 9 weeks.
If you want to jump start your language learning this summer and fit two terms into one season, or if vacations and other summer plans are making it hard for you to commit to a 9-week language class, we have a solution for you – our shorter, Summer Intensive Language Courses! As an added bonus, these classes will be discounted 15% off our regular prices. Get the same content and quality learning by meeting more often for a shorter number of weeks.
We are offering four Summer Intensive Language Courses, including three beginner courses in American Sign Language, French, and Japanese for Youth (ages 11-15) as well as an intermediate Spanish course. If you take one beginner Summer Intensive Language, you’ll be able to jump into a second-level class for the normal Summer Term, and the intermediate Spanish course will give students an opportunity to participate in structured conversations around a book the class will read together.
Here are the details for each course:
American Sign Language (ASL) Survivor 1 (Online)
June 20 – 30
Meets Mon. through Thurs. each week, 6-8:15 p.m. (CDT)
Discounted price: $275
French Survivor 1 (Online)
June 20-30
Meets Mon. through Thurs. each week, 6-8:15 p.m. (CDT)
Discounted price: $275
Spanish – Level Up Lecturas (Online)
June 21-July 1
Meets Tues. through Fri. 1st week and Mon. through Fri. 2nd week, 7-8 p.m. (CDT)
Discounted price: $160
Japanese for Youth Survivor 1 (In-Person)
June 2-30
Meets Tues. & Thurs. each week, 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. (CDT)
Discounted price: $245
We hope you will join us!
TLC is also offering our regular Summer Term of classes, which begin the week of July 11, 2022. You can take one of these intensives to jump start your learning – and register for the second level class for the regular term. Registration for these classes will open on June 6, 2022.
TLC held graduation for its Spring 2022 Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) students on Saturday, May 14. Five students completed the certification preparation course, and one has begun teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for TLC.
TLC Partner Catholic Charities, Diocese of Nashville, has welcomed 332 Afghan refugees to Middle Tennessee. The Nashville International Center for Empowerment (NICE), another TLC partner, has settled over 200 Afghan refugees and is expecting up to 100 more. These refugees were displaced by the largest evacuation in 50 years of people from their home country to the U.S.
In the first quarter of 2021, TLC has tested 289 of these refugees to ascertain their English proficiency and either placed them in a TLC English as a Second Language (ESL) class at the appropriate level or referred them to other agencies for assistance. TLC will be testing and referring all the adult refugees in the Nashville area. So far, 108 Afghans have attended a TLC ESL class with more expected to enroll over the coming months.
In addition, TLC was able to offer an Afghan interpreter a scholarship to attend our legal interpreter training, and we hope to be able to offer additional scholarships in the future.
TLC Training Specialist Richard Ponce de Leon, TLC Interpreter and MITC Instructor Nadia Crank, and TLC Interpreter Dennis Caffey recently participated in an educational panel for 20 candidates for a doctorate in nursing from Belmont University. They were joined by Dr. Elizabeth Morse, professor of nursing; Erick Hernandez Campos, nurse practitioner and student of the Doctorate in Nursing at Belmont; and Lauren Smith, family nurse practitioner at Siloam. The panel, which was sponsored and held at Siloam Health in Nashville, focused on language access, the use of interpreters, and culture-informed healthcare. Siloam Health provides health care for the uninsured, underserved, and culturally marginalized in Middle Tennessee.
The fifth “Spanish for Educator’s 10-week course began on April 4 with 13 participants. The group are all Metro Nashville Public School teachers from either Glencliff High School or the schools that feed into Glencliff. The course was developed by TLC to help participants with little or no previous Spanish study to develop a cultural understanding and a basic repertoire of conversation skills to engage with Spanish speakers in their schools and local communities.
Erika Burnett, Diversity, Inclusion, and Intercultural Communication Instructor, represented the Tennessee Language Center at the Metro Nashville Office of Family Safety remote and in-person panel about meaningful language access for trauma survivors. The panel addressed staff and partners of Nashville’s Family Safety Center as well as Tennessee’s statewide family justice centers and their partners (victim advocates, legal aid, prosecutors, medical and mental health professionals, law enforcement, crisis response staff, etc.) Topics addressed included how to prepare a trauma survivor to work with interpreters as well as how to prepare interpreters to work with trauma survivors, what language access plans are and how to begin developing one, and cultural sensitivity.