The first time Craig Benjamin Jr. saw a seahorse at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, he came away not just with the experience, but a new word in his vocabulary: shui mu.
That's Chinese for seahorse.
"I always thought they were fake," said Craig, 9, a rising fourth-grader at Running Brook Elementary School.
Craig, along with 77 other third- through eighth-graders, journeyed to the National Aquarium recently as part of StarTalk, a foreign-language instruction program in the county schools that, thanks to a $100,000 federal grant, was extended for the first time this summer to elementary and middle school students.
From June 27 through July 22, students from Howard and neighboring counties split into four classes at Swansfield Elementary School in Columbia, where they were immersed in the Chinese language.
"They didn't seem freaked out at all," said Deborah Espitia, coordinator of world languages for the school system. "The first day they came in, the teachers shook their hands and greeted them in Chinese, to ease them in. It was slow at first, but everything is so content-based, and there's a lot of active learning."
For some students, those content-based learning sessions were the best aspects of the programs. Some just liked being able to count in Chinese.
"I can go from one to 99, but I always forget 100," said Raul Cordero, 11, a rising sixth-grader at Harper's Choice Middle School, who enlisted in the program because he wanted to learn a new language. "It's not like I could go around having detailed conversations with Chinese people, but I know the basics, and I very much want to keep learning."
Instructors said the students learned the language quickly.
"The majority of students have really good ears for that — the vowel sounds have four different tones," Espitia said. "It's helped us to see that it's not hard to learn a new language."
The program was not limited to Howard County students, said Iris Chao, instructional lead for the elementary students, and children traveled from as far as Frederick to take part in StarTalk. There were more than 70 students on a waiting list for the summer program, Chao said, and the school system plans to continue the elementary StarTalk program next summer.
"We hope our grant will be renewed," Espitia said. "We do plan on applying for it again."
Meanwhile, Espitia said, the school system is moving forward with approval from the Board of Education to create an elementary world language program. Starting in the fall, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish will be included in the curriculum at Laurel Woods Elementary and Waverly Elementary.
Learning another language is useful and beneficial at any stage, Espitia said, because the learning process taps into more than just linguistics.
"If you think about it, you're negotiating meaning to understand what's happening around you," she said. "Language learning plays into higher-order thinking."