• My Livingston Life... 
      
     
    Judith G. Winston
      

    "I was fortunate to start my career in Livingston at Heritage Jr HS. It was there that I interacted with a host of enthusiastic and creative educators from diverse disciplines. Through my association with them, I learned multiple strategies to assist children in easily learning academic subject matter. I taught a discipline that, by many, is considered to be challenging, rote learning. The other teachers of French and Spanish and I were inspired to make language acquisition fun. We looked at numerous aspects of language learning and determined that translation from one language to the next was not practical nor provided a logical situational context that helped students learn in a meaningful way.

     

    Judith G. Winston Later, as the district supervisor, I was able to coordinate the efforts of the teachers of the World Language/ESL department to help students really understand a language and its diverse cultures through creative instructional techniques and materials. We also felt strongly that children need to learn a second language earlier than in middle school. To that end, we unified to create a program of instruction to introduce a second language early on in elementary school. Additionally, we did not want to be viewed as a district offering only western European languages. Chinese was selected and for many years has been an integral component of our secondary school program.  

     

    As a department, our teachers have been gratified that many students now take more than one world language. In so doing, they are acquiring enhanced linguistic skills and increased cultural awareness highly valued in a global society."