New Canaan schools look to broaden language options

After five years of teaching Mandarin Chinese at New Canaan High School, the school district is expanding its program into Saxe Middle School. As part of the proposed 2012-13 budget, students at Saxe Middle School will be able to take Mandarin as their regular foreign language — and seventh and eighth graders will be able to add Mandarin as a second language.

The new program is part of the school's continuing effort to prepare students for a global economy.

"We're teaching kids today, for a world that we don't really know what it will look like," said Lizette D'Amico, the school district's world language coordinator for kindergarten through eighth grade. "We're trying to make world language a core, and not an extra. It's no longer a question, when they come to middle or high school, of 'will you take a language,' the question is 'which language will you take?'"