North Penn Presidential Scholar creates and grows Spanish translation site

TOWAMENCIN – As Catherine Cavanaugh donned her cap and gown and walked through North Penn High School’s Crawford Stadium on Saturday, she was leaving behind more than just memories.

Her impact on fellow students will live on for years, in the form of her “Spanish Translation Project” meant to help build bridges between languages.

“I love this project. In a weird way, I’m so happy that I was told ‘no,’ because without that initial rejection, there wouldn’t be any of this,” said Cavanaugh.

Early in 2020, Cavanaugh was a junior at North Penn High School involved in numerous extracurriculars including the student’s English Language Learners, or ELL club, helping fellow students learn English as their second language. As part of the high school superintendent’s council, Cavanaugh and fellow students would talk with administrators about ongoing issues, including support for those still learning the language.

“Some students knew minimal English, did not have an aide with them, and the teacher who was teaching the class did not know their language. So there was this big language gap,” Cavanaugh said.

“Completing assignments for mandatory classes, like health class or science class, could become much more difficult for them,” she said.

After seeing little action from administrators, Cavanaugh said she was talking with family, including one side of her family that’s from Nicaragua, which led to an idea.

“North Penn is such a great community, and yet this is an aspect where we could use so much improvement. And sitting there with the family, they gave me the idea: ‘Well, why don’t you make something?'”

That idea, combined with long talks with fellow students and high school Spanish teacher Senor Alejandro Vidal, led to what is now the “Spanish Translation Project” – a website linking students in need of translation services for specialized texts like those courses, with those fluent enough to offer that translation.

“The 10th and 11th grade health curriculum, we completely translated, including the textbook work. All of biology, all of the common core for kids who would need to take a Keystone exam, and all of chemistry,” Cavanaugh said.

“We just translated the entire Constitution, with guides for the citizenship test and Pennsylvania state civics test each high school student needs to do. And we’re looking into a couple of other content areas for next year,” she said.

Global reach

From the start last year, and since a profile in January in the high school’s Knight Crier, the site has now grown to reach well beyond the district’s borders.

“What I think is so cool about this is that it’s not just a local project. It’s not just helping people at North Penn,” Cavanaugh said.

“It has reach now in 15 states and five countries, and we have about 300 continuing users. I’m able to track, and kind of pinpoint where they are – there’s definitely a big community,” she said.

And that community will soon expand: Vidal plans to teach in Santa Fe, New Mexico starting this fall, while Cavanaugh will be attending the University of Pittsburgh Honors college to study neuroscience and political science, and both plan to expand the site even more.

“I’m still going to be managing the website from Pittsburgh, but in each area there’s going to be a student liaison, or two – there’s going to be at least one or two out in Santa Fe, and one or two in Lansdale,” Cavanaugh said.

“What I’m hoping to do is, there are partner programs with ELL students in Pittsburgh, so going into schools there, and getting content, and seeing what they specifically need, since each area is a little bit different.”

All in the translation

The site originally began by offering translations of high-school level courses only, but could expand to offering younger ages too, depending on demand and availability of translators. As of Friday, Cavanaugh said she’s done “a decent amount” of the translation work up on the site: ten to fifteen PowerPoint presentations are posted in the biology category, each about 100 slides, and those have all been either originally created or vetted by her.

“Now that I have a lot more people translating, they will give me some bare-bones slides, and then I’m filling in some of the pictures, making sure the graphics are right, changing some of the wording if it’s a little bit rough, and then posting it online and making sure that it’s ready to go for the students.”

“I absolutely love my translators. There’s about 15 of them, and they’re the best. They absolutely love what they do,” she said.

Those translators are all members of the high school’s Spanish Honor Society, and Cavanaugh said she’s been glad to see the translation project expand their language skills too.

“The kids who are translating are being exposed to new vocabulary, new ways to say things, new content. And the kids who are learning get exactly what teachers are giving them,” she said.

Then came COVID

Would any of this have happened without COVID-19? Perhaps not: “A big initial incentive was while these kids were learning online, because I would get text messages from some of the ELL kids I’m friendly with, saying ‘Man, this virtual learning is really hard.'”

“A lot of them had a hard time because of the work that was being sent, and because it’s all online, all the time. You’re not getting any kind of face-to-face help, and it was hard since they couldn’t go to the ELL support rooms, like they always would” pre-COVID, she said.

How would she answer those who say the ELL students should just learn English?

“Why don’t we drop them in a foreign country, where they can’t speak the language, and try to figure it out? It’s not that these kids aren’t trying, they’re working so hard, but it takes time to learn anything,” she said.

“Whatever language you speak, it is so important to be able to communicate with other people, so that you’re on the same page, you know what you want. We want these kids to learn English. We’re not telling them, ‘Don’t learn English.’ We’re just saying, there are other avenues of support that they may need.”

Recognition

Her project has now caught national attention: The school district announced in late May that Cavanaugh was one of only three teens in Pennsylvania chosen as a finalist in the U.S. Department of Education’s Presidential Scholars Program, following similar honors from the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) as a National Honor Society Finalist and winner of a $5,000 scholarship, as well as a Coca-Cola Scholarship regional finalist and U.S. Youth Senate Program finalist.

While a trip to Washington D.C. for the Presidential Scholars recognition in person is still not yet finalized due to COVID-19, Cavanaugh received her medal this past week, and said it carries valuable lessons.

“There are kids who are brilliant, and I am not one of them. I love school, I do very well in school, but there are kids with 150, 160, brilliant IQs, and they have just a natural ability that is a level above mine,” she said.

“What I learned through this entire process is that there’s a lot to be said for hard work. There’s a certain level of intelligence, or compassion, or drive that you need to have, just making sure that you continue, and you persist, and you do what feels right. That was what got me farther along.”

While writing essays to be judged for that award, Cavanaugh said she thought of her grandfather, whose family emigrated from Italy and learned English as a child, and reflected on what she called the “immigrant hustle” he brought.

“It’s not that every family has the same story, of how they came to America. Everyone has a different reason, but almost no one was here to begin with,” she said.

“That’s something that will resonate with everyone, and something so important: it’s just to be happy that we’re here, because this is just such a great place.”

Special thanks for their help go to her family, Vidal, all of her Spanish teachers along the way, her fellow high school translators, and the handful of YouTube videos Cavanaugh said she watched to learn how to build the website itself.

“I’m not a big technology buff, but I learned the website skills, and taught myself how to put everything together, because it was just something that I thought was so important.”

“If these kids are coming to America, and they’re learning an entire different language and culture, I can at least buck up and learn how to make a website. I said ‘OK, that’s a fair exchange.'”