An ISU curriculum and instruction instructor was nationally recognized for her work in foreign language education with elementary school students.

Marcia Harmon Rosenbusch, adjunct associate professor of curriculum and instruction, received the Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in November.

Rosenbusch was nominated by her colleagues at the National Network for Early Language Learning, said Jeanette Borich, who wrote a letter of support and recommendation for the award.

“Her greatest accomplishment going toward this award would be her leadership on a national level,” Borich said. “She’s done a lot in terms of promoting elementary foreign language.”

Rosenbusch, director of the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center, said she probably was nominated for her work with the center.

“It’s nationally funded, and I helped write the original grants,” she said.

The center is housed at Iowa State and focuses on improving K-12 foreign language education nationwide, she said.

“We have a summer institute for teachers, [and] we’ve had people from 49 of the 50 states come,” Rosenbusch said. “We teach them how to use the national standards and how to incorporate children’s literature into the foreign language education.”

The teachers who attend these summer sessions take the information they gain back to their own school districts across the nation, which creates a big impact on the country, she said.

Rosenbusch also helped organize the New Visions program, which developed from the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center, she said. New Visions is a national program that helps develop foreign language communication skills in U.S. schools.

Borich, who teaches Spanish and French to grades one through three in the Ankeny school district, said Rosenbusch’s work has encouraged educators to “look to the future, so that the profession will continue to grow and get stronger.”

One of the biggest benefits of having such a largely recognized national program is that “we can bring in strong national leaders in foreign language,” Rosenbusch said. “We bring the best in to train the teachers during the sessions.”

Borich, who has attended national conferences with Rosenbusch, said she is impressed by the spreading effect of the work.

“I am amazed at the contacts she has at all levels” Borich said. “She is able to bring in leaders in foreign language education from all over.”

Rosenbusch began working with foreign language education in the late 1970s, she said, when she returned from living in Argentina.

“When we moved back, my children were still young, and I wanted to preserve the Spanish language that they had learned in Argentina,” she said.

After going back to school for her doctorate, Rosenbusch began working with the local school district to improve its foreign language education. In 1985, she conducted a statewide survey of elementary schools’ foreign language departments and began a newsletter, she said.

The National Network for Early Language Learning was created in 1986 and 1987, and Rosenbusch was asked to write the national newsletter, she said. The newsletter has since turned into the journal “Learning Languages”, the only journal that focuses on early childhood foreign language education.