It is no secret that the World Language Department at Sherwood is limited in scope with the school only offering Spanish and French courses this year. Meanwhile, MCPS claims to offer a broad range of languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), Chinese, Russian, Italian, and Japanese. Sherwood previously offered ASL and Italian but abandoned these classes due to a reported lack of student interest.

“Enrollment dissipated to the point that we could not keep the programs,” said Principal Tim Britton

“For a course to survive, a minimum of 20 students must be enrolled unless the course is a graduation requirement.”

It is also difficult to sustain a large number of language courses at a school due to staffing issues and other problems. “First the middle schools would also have to offer it, and to offer a new language we wouldn’t be able to start with all the levels because there probably wouldn’t be enough students registered in all the levels in that language,” said World Language Department Head, Ariana Peralta. “We would have to build the program up from the beginning and offer more levels as the program grows. The other challenge with that is that we would only be able to hire a part-time teacher and not full time if we do not have the enrollment to offer all the levels.”

Other MCPS high schools offer a greater variety of languages; however, those schools, such as Blair, Walter Johnson, and Whitman are on the larger side in areas with a greater diversity of spoken languages. “There are schools in the county that offer more languages but you have to think about the school’s population, and the diversity of other communities and the languages that are spoken in other communities that make it so you have more programs,” said Peralta.

With all these constraints to take into consideration, the World Languages Department has moved towards trying to expand the already existing Spanish and French programs rather than attempting to introduce new languages. “My goal is to grow the French and Spanish programs. When I started here we had five sections of Spanish 5 and two AP sections and now we’re down to one AP section and three sections of Spanish 5,” said Peralta. “The [student] population has also gone down, and we don’t have enough kids signing up for languages.”

However, the French program at Sherwood has already been struggling recently, especially after long time French teacher John Falls retired in December 2023. This school year, French 5 and AP French are no longer being offered. There is only one section of French 1-4.

“We’re always looking to keep French, but it’s always dependent on how many students register, so if we have more students registering for these courses then we keep adding sections. But if every year you have less and less students, you can’t offer a course,” explained Peralta. Although it may look quite bleak for the World Languages Department as a whole, Peralta is putting in extensive work to try to build the program back to what it once was. According to Peralta, currently 27 students are taking French 4, meaning that if twenty of them register for AP next school year then the course can return. She has also designed an entirely new Spanish 4 curriculum this year to smooth the transition to AP and possibly allow students to jump straight to AP after taking 4, therefore growing the AP Spanish program. It is tough to get students to take the higher level courses but this change may persuade students to take chances and sign up beyond the two-year high school requirement.