Waterford High School offers four languages to students: French, Spanish, Latin, and ASL. There is a push by some students to offer more,

In Connecticut languages taught include Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, German, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Arabic, and Greek.

WHS only offers the three most popular ones: French, Spanish, Latin, and added in American Sign Language a couple of years ago.

French teacher, Madame Shea, says that she wishes other languages were offered because she believes that it’s an important skill and is disappointed that Americans expect everyone to speak English and don’t consider learning another language themselves. Her top choices would be to offer a Chinese and a Hindi course because of the number of her own students who also speak Chinese. “I have several students who speak Hindi,” Shea says.

Junior Maria Paloka, says she would love to see different languages offered because there are lots of “different job opportunities for people in the future.” Being able to speak an uncommon language can give students an edge when applying for various jobs.. If more classes were available, there would be more diversity. She recommends adding Greek and German because she feels that they are the most interesting to learn, and she fluently speaks Greek as well.

Amanda. Marchese, the head of the World Language at WHS, says that the reason that we don’t have more languages classes is because we always taught French, Spanish, and Latin here. She also stated that it is harder to find other language teachers willing to teach other languages.