Cool Schools: John Adams High School students are teaching Darden Elementary school students Spanish virtually

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind.-- "Here we are with our Adams students once again to teach you a little bit of Spanish," said John Adams High School Spanish teacher, Cecilia Staton Veraduzco. 

As the Coronavirus outbreak forces schools across the country to close, the students of South Bend Community Schools Corperation are learning Spanish in a very nontraditional setting.

"What is your favorite color? You would say, qual es to color favorito," said Veraduzco during the virtual lesson.

Veraduzco's students at John Adams High School are teaching the elementary students at Darden Elementary School.

“How do I transform my classroom into something that kind of works online because of how I run my class room. Especially when you teaching a language. You want kids to talk, watch a video and have discussions," said Veraduzco.

With the pandemic pushing the limit on educational teaching boundaries, having students become the teachers is a method that wasn’t put in place until schools were shut down.

“Our students were learning Italian from Notre Dame and unfortunately we weren’t able to continue with that program so I reached out to a dear friend. Are you willing to interact with our students and teach them Spanish and she jumped right on board," said Darden Elementary School principal, Patricia Karban.

To John Adams High School Spanish student Ellie Graff, the option to help teach Darden students is a no-brainer.

“It’s a really hard time to be in school. And just to know that we have teachers who really care about us that much that they trying to coordinate this during these hard times gives me a lot of faith," said Graff.

The experience even motivating the Darden Darts to learn more languages.

“We even had a couple of students who even said, hey can you teach us Egyptian? I think it’s just broadening their array of languages that are out there. I think this has taught them that our world is so closely related especially during this time," said Karban.

“Adeltante, lo puedemos hacerlo, somos mas fuerte que lo pensamos," said Veraduzco. (Onward, we can do it. We are stronger than we think!)