How North Carolina’s ‘Conexiones’ Program is Minting a New Generation of Global Diplomats

There was that specific hum in the UNC Greensboro hallway outside the auditorium that only occurs when too many seventh graders are attempting to whisper simultaneously. A few people gripped folders. Some wore handmade sashes bearing the names of nations they had never been to, such as Uruguay, Senegal, and Mongolia.

One Harnett County girl continued to rehearse her opening line under her breath, transitioning between Spanish and English in the middle of her sentence before realizing her mistake. On March 5, 510 children had come to debate the future of the world’s wildlife in Spanish.

Conexiones para la Aõ Diplomüge, a program that began as an experiment by one teacher and has quietly developed into something akin to a small statewide institution, was in its fourth year. Spanish-language enrichment is not exactly the norm in the 13 counties from which the schools originated, the majority of which are rural. Approximately 27% of these students are from Spanish-speaking families, while a startling proportion do not. Seeing a young person from Burke County and a young person from New Hanover County discuss biodiversity policy in fluent Spanish challenges many preconceived notions about what middle school in North Carolina is like.

The origin story is almost too neat. Adriana Rueda, a teacher who had previously worked at a Colombian school, began organizing little Model UN-style debates between her American students and her former students back home about ten years ago.

In essence, it was a workaround to keep her children interested in a language that the majority of them only used in class. Eventually, Strauss, who oversees the Participate Learning program, learned about it. It seems like no one really anticipated it would take off the way it did.

There are currently 33 Conexiones schools in Virginia and North Carolina, and new districts are joining on a regular basis. Although the state has made significant investments in dual-language programs at the elementary school level—research consistently demonstrates that children learn languages more quickly the earlier they begin—the gap has always been middle school. In essence, students were being dropped into a void by strong elementary programs. It was filled with conexiones.

The day itself was a kind of staged chaos. As they went through various stations, such as a flag-matching game, a fake news desk where they recorded segments about their schools, and a conservation table filled with stuffed animals where students wrote sticky notes about which species they wanted to save and why, students collected stamps in fictitious passports. Campus tours were conducted entirely in Spanish by bilingual UNCG fellows. UNCG Spanish professor Marisa González brought fourteen of her students to volunteer. Middle schoolers see college students who sound like them, look like them, and have chosen this path, making it difficult to ignore the layered design.

Thirty-two students were brought by Paola Weimann, an Argentine exchange teacher at the International School at Gregory. During last year’s water-themed CAD, they went on a somewhat charming field trip to their local water treatment plant as part of their months-long preparation. “The best thing about Conexiones,” she stated, “is that students have impactful learning experiences, and they learn a second language at the same time.”

It’s still unclear if all of these children end up as engineers, diplomats, or anything else. However, there is a sense that something truly fascinating is being created here as the auditorium fills with seventh graders who are passionately debating wildlife trafficking and habitat preservation in a second language. Silently. The majority of people don’t write articles about counties.