Mt. Pleasant Schools use new translation technology

MT. PLEASANT — Thanks to the AEA, students in Mt. Pleasant Community School’s English Language Learners (ELL) program are benefiting from new translation headphone technology.

During a report to the school board Monday, Jan. 9, ELL Teachers Makenzie Sartorius-Roberts, Jennifer Rebling, and Tammy Tyrell shared some of their experiences using translation earbuds with newcomers to the ELL program.

According to Sartorius-Roberts, just this year, MPCSD received a limited supply of Timekettle WT2 Edge/W3 real-time translators from the AEA. Sartorius-Roberts and Rebling, each have three sets of earbuds for their students, but the number of newcomer students exceeds the number of earbuds.

“ … basically [students] wear these earbuds and they translate anything the teacher says to them,” Sartorius-Roberts explained. “And there are all these different languages that they can do.”

“So, not only do they have access to the core content, but they also have that ability to socialize with peers and teachers, too,” she said.

“It was really cool when we first got them,” Sartorius-Roberts said. “My kiddos were just like ‘Thank you, teacher! Thank you, teacher!”

“They were super excited that we could just sit there and have a normal conversation,” she said. “It was really neat.”

According to Timekettle’s product description, the earbuds offer bidirectional simultaneous translation, 95% accuracy in 40 languages and 93 accents, 0.5-3 second translation speed, and offline translation for eight languages.

“We got these from the AEA, for now,” Sartorius-Roberts said. “But it would be really nice if teachers could have them, if the office could have them when communicating with parents.”

“Right now, if a parent called in and needs to talk in Spanish, we need to find a para,” she said. “It is a lot shuffling trying to find a way to meet their needs.”

“The earbuds we were given, we were told not to let office staff use them, they were only for students,” Elementary ELL Teacher Jennifer Rebling said. “So, if the district purchased them then we could use them wherever we see fit.”

“I see a huge need in the office,” she said. “Even if a parent comes in with broken English, it is hard to communicate with them unless a bilingual para is there.”

This need for a bilingual para attributes to the current para vacancy in the ELL program at Lincoln Elementary.

“We’ve had applicants for the Lincoln position, but not all of them have been bilingual,” Rebling said. “We’re trying to find a bilingual para for the building.”

“That technology is fairly new,” Superintendent John Henrikson said. “It came from the AEA, as they mentioned. It had to be used for programing. It couldn’t be used in the office. It had to be used for programing.”

When school board president Jennifer Crull asked the ELL team what additional supports they needed, Sartorius-Roberts responded, “The earbuds are a big big thing. It would be nice if we could get some of our own for the district.”

“I even see those newcomers going on field trips and getting to wear them so they understand what they’re seeing and what they’re doing,” she said. “Otherwise they just have to watch body language.”

“I think for the families that is going to be huge to be able to come into a parent teacher conference and use that to be a true sharing of information,” Crull added.

“I’m with you,” Henrikson said to the ELL teachers, “to get a feel for it and see that it is working, now, maybe we need to deploy it in different places.”

So far, the only issue the ELL teachers have encountered with the earbuds is difficulties connecting to the student computers.

“Our tech people are working on that,” High School ELL Teacher Tammy Tyrell said.

According to Sartorius-Roberts, Ottumwa School District purchased 70 of these earbuds. Approximately 20% of their students use ELL services.

They are one of the first schools in the country to utilize this technology on such a large scale.

“The percentage of ELL kind of ebbs and flows, a little bit,” Henrikson said. “We’ve been as high as just over 7% of the entire student body. We’re back down to closer to 3.5%, right now.”

Currently, ELL students primarily come into the Mt. Pleasant schools with various Spanish dialects; however, the district has seen many different language trends.

“At one point, we had 17 different language in the district,” Tyrrell said.

Upon hearing that these earbuds cost around $300 a pair, the board showed interest in further exploring if the district might purchase more.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com