Imagine total chaos. The bathrooms are filled with high school students making costume changes. The halls are teeming with teachers giving last minute instructions while students put the final touches on art work and sets. The strains of music are coming from the auditorium as one school's band warms up to perform. All of this happens at The Western Carolina Foreign Language Competition and the final product is a result of a collaborative effort between the foreign language and fine arts department at my school.

Like many other schools, we are always interested in interdisciplinary projects. One of the most successful projects that we have undertaken did not start off as an attempt to do interdisciplinary work, but it evolved into an event which involved not only one other department, but many constituents of the school beyond academic departments.

Nine years ago, our Spanish teacher told me about a foreign language competition held at Western Carolina University composed of creative and traditional aspects. There was no limit to the amount of students that we could bring, (there were usually about 600 at the competition), about 13 other schools competed, and the cost was only three dollars per student. The competition involves several components including a play, a musical piece, art, and a trivia contest.

Our experience with the competition evolved a great deal during the nine years that we have been attending. The first year, the world language department went, we took 50 students and the language teachers did most of the preparations by themselves. During the next few years, students took a more active role by building sets, writing original songs and helping to make costumes. A Spanish class put together a horse cart from Chile that their teacher had found at a yard sale. The class wrote a letter to the company that made the cart. They enclosed the picture of their cart. Students performed original poetry, learned endless facts for the trivia contest and entered their paintings in the art contest.

Although the first year was a positive experience, and the students were already talking about what we would do next year, there were many complaints from teachers that too many students had missed classes. There was not much support from the non-language faculty because they did not see the value of the competition. One teacher even told a student that if she went to the competition, her grade would be lowered on the makeup test.

The next year, we tried to educate the school about what we were doing. We wanted them to know how much work went into preparing for the competition. We knew that this was a prime chance for education outside of the classroom, but we needed to prove this to the rest of the school.   We did a presentation at school convocation and shortly after, the Arts' department head came to me and asked if we could collaborate on the competition. I was ecstatic to have some help and our interdisciplinary project began. Our plan was to have the teachers in each area lead a particular segment of preparation, but we wanted the students to do most of the work so that they would learn from the experience and feel invested in the preparation as a whole.

The musical is a complicated aspect of the competition and needs many people to get it off the ground. The drama department provides us with costumes and props. The drama teacher became so used to me asking for fake blood to act out scenes in the musical that he gave me the recipe to make my own. The band director transposes music for us and works with the musicians. The choral director works with the singers. The tech director brings students together to work on the set. The language department comes up with the theme for the musical, finds the songs and then helps with pronunciation and logistics such as finding a place to practice, and supplying food. We often try to have a similar theme between the play and the musical so that we can use the same set. Preparation for everything sometimes continues right up until our arrival. I will never forget the year the main bus went by the smaller bus which had pulled over. Two of the Spanish teachers were looking in the grass on the side of the road. I was afraid that something was wrong, but upon arrival, the teachers told me they were just looking for some branches for the set. We were often sewing costumes in the bus on the way. If anyone were to come to the area where all the foreign language classes were held a week before the competition, they would hear a combination of hammering, singing, clapping and laughter. One colleague observed that during the week before the competition we were able to bring language alive for the students.

In addition to the major contributions from the World Language and Art Department, other academic departments add their pieces to the competition. The History department sometimes helps us with the trivia competition. During the trivia competition, our team of four students must answer questions about history, language, and general culture. How well we do depends on how much they have learned in European history, yet to reinforce language development, the questions are all asked in the target language. In addition to help from these other departments, we also build on skills from other departments in our preparation for the competition. Students often write original poems for the poetry recitation using skills that they have learned in English class. The students must use their math skills to measure out and cut material for the sets.

Each year more students come back raving about the experience and fewer teachers complain. The students have a chance to use skills from several disciplines and they see other students showing passion for using the language. Some recent highlights were the video that the Spanish students did featuring chocolingua, the chocolate bar that insures that you will speak perfect Spanish when you eat it and The French musical where the students did their version of the musical Le Roi Soleil. My favorite memory will always be the year a freshman boy sang Bring Him Home from Les Miserables and it was so beautiful that a woman in the front row was crying. The same boy brought the house down with a French rap the following year.

Each year more people become involved with the preparation for the competition, illustrating that this kind of work is truly interdisciplinary and connects to all parts of our community. We now have a bus driver who asks every year what the date of the competition is so that he can mark it on his calendar so he can be sure to drive us. Additionally, the kitchen makes us about 90 sack lunches and teachers readily volunteer to drive mini vans.

The positive aspects of this project are,

• Students and teachers collaborate together as a team across disciplines.
• Students see how much passion and energy other students put in to the event.
• Students receive rewards and recognition for their hard work.
• Students use their language and other skills outside of the classroom.
• We publish the results in the local paper generating positive recognition for the school.
• The arts department has another opportunity for their students to perform.

Despite the success of this competition, we still face some challenges:

• We would like to take all of our students but the administration has asked us to limit the numbers.
• We have difficulty finding time when everyone can practice together.
• Students who are struggling in other areas cannot go with us because it is not a good idea for them to miss a day of school.
• We have to reserve transportation far enough in advance to make sure that we have enough buses.
• The money for transportation and registration comes out of the World Language budget.
• We need to start planning at least three months in advance of the event.

Although these are challenges, there are solutions to all of them. We are working harder to integrate the competition into our curriculum to make it easier to start earlier. We believe the administration will feel better about sending more students if we can continue to prove the educational value of the competition. We can do some fundraising to raise any extra money that we may need for the competition.

I am proud of the evolution of this project. It no longer seems like an overwhelming task that few people appreciate. Students and teachers begin asking us in the fall what we will be doing in the spring. None of the teachers complain about students missing classes anymore and students beg to be a part of it. Last year we came home with fourteen awards and this recognition actually boosted our sign ups for first year language. The competition has moved beyond being an isolated event supported by one department. It is a team effort which brings the majority of the school together in a collaborative effort.

Jennifer Bonn has been teaching French and Spanish for 26 years. She spent nine years as World Language department chair at Rabun Gap Nacoochee School where the collaboration for the competition occurred. She now teaches full time at Kennesaw State University and part time at Mount Paran Christian. She loves to read, write and run. She has three amazing children and a wonderful husband. Jennifer Bonn lives in Kennesaw, Ga.