Dr. Brian Barnett, TLC’s Director of World Languages, presented a professional development workshop to Clarksville-Montgomery County School System world languages teachers in February. The workshop was part of their in-service day, and focused on facilitating target language comprehensibility. This is the third professional development workshop he has done for them.
The Tennessee Language Center was featured in the most recent In Touch With Tennessee podcast. The podcast is produced by the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service. This one features TLC’s Interim Director of Interpretation and Translation Services (ITS) talking about our language services. It’s about 12 minutes long – check it out!
TLC hosted a free Kakizome recently for current and new Japanese students. Kakizome is a traditional Japanese New Year’s event where people write their hopes and wishes for the new year in Japanese script with a calligraphy brush. Each student was then invited to share their wishes for the New Year – in English or Japanese – with the rest of the group. In addition to Japanese classes from beginning to advanced, TLC also offers Japanese calligraphy classes for those with an interest.
Congratulations to the 14 students who graduated from the Tennessee Language Center’s Medical Interpreter Training session on Dec. 13. The students represented 3 states (Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma), 5 Tennessee counties, and two languages (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese). Mandarin Chinese was a new language for TLC and increases our total number of languages served to date from 7 to 8. TLC’s program prepares students to take the test to become a certified medical interpreter through either the CCHI or the NBCMI, the two organizations that certify medical interpreters in the U.S. Find out more about TLC’s medical interpreting program.
The Fall Court Interpreter Workshop had 26 participants representing 16 counties in Tennessee. For the first time, an interpreter for Karen, the language spoken in Myanmar and parts of Thailand, took the course. This workshop provided by the Tennessee Language Center is the first step in becoming an interpreter with the Administrative Office of the Courts.
TLC presented a webinar on Oct. 22 for interpreters, especially medical interpreters, about interpreting for end-of-life conversations. With palliative and hospice care becoming more common, interpreters are often present for these conversations, and the workshop focused on how to handle them.
“The subject was very interesting, and it does not get covered a lot,” said one attendee. “This was one of the best webinars I ever attended.”
TLC has taken a leadership role in the newly launched Cultural Ambassadors for Disaster Communication (CADC) program. Together with the Nashville Mayor’s Office and Office of Emergency Management (OEM), TLC is co-leading the program that aims to improve communications during disasters with the immigrant and limited English proficiency communities with the ultimate goal of saving lives.
During previous disaster in the Nashville area like flooding and tornadoes, it was often hard to reach these communities before, during, and after with emergency information. The goal of the CADC is to have “ambassadors” within those communities that are already in trusted or leadership positions. OEM and TLC will provide special training to these ambassadors. The program launched this Fall and will continue the ambassador training through the rest of 2022 and into 2023. TLC Training Specialist Richard Ponce de Leon is representing TLC in the program.
TLC welcomes Genna Linton and Aimee Dunphy as Interpretation & Translation project managers. Genna will focus on interpretation while Aimee focuses on translation.
Genna is a certified medical interpreter and most recently served as the bilingual front desk receptionist at Liberty Collegiate Academy in Nashville. She has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and geography from the University of Georgia.
Most recently, Aimee was a test administrator for Pearson Professional Centers in Brentwood. She has a bachelor’s degree in Japanese from Ball State University in Indiana.
TLC is proud of the Spanish for Educators program created by the World Languages team for receiving the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service Vice Presidential Citation. This award recognizes a special effort by staff members who go above and beyond normal job assignments or have worked relentlessly on a complex project. Congratulations to Brian Barnett, Jack Willey, Maya Campbell, and Stasie Harrington for their work on creating this course.
Spanish for Educators was created for K-12 teachers, school staff, and administrators with very little to no previous Spanish study to develop cultural understanding and a basic repertoire of conversation skills to engage with Spanish speakers in their schools and local communities. It is offered four times a year. Contact worldlanguages@tennessee.edu for more information.