"I try to give students real-life situations in which to perform their skills," says Debra Clauss, who teaches Spanish at Mount Gilead High School in Mount Gilead. In an effort to provide her students with a total-immersion foreign language program, Ms. Clauss has organized and led trips to Spain for students and their parents. In her classes, Ms. Clauss places special emphasis on the cultural aspect of foreign language acquisition and on parental collaboration. Classroom assignments include such projects as the researching of family trees and accounts of family histories, thereby reinforcing the ties parents have to the school and encouraging a thoughtful exchange between students and their parents. Ms. Clauss has also been instrumental to her school's winning a Venture Grant and to the implementation of the educational reforms that it has made possible.
1977 Ohio State University, B.A.
