18-America the Bilingual podcast - Bill Weir Loves Language Teachers--Wishes he had Listened to His

Bill Weir, travel correspondent and host of CNN Wonder List has his dream job. He gets to jet all over the world to capture images and weave stories together from what he finds. It’s all perfect, except for one thing--Bill is monolingual.

“I wish I could travel back in time and punch my teenage self in the face for not paying attention. I was one of those horrible language students who didn't figure I would ever need it.” He seems an odd choice to address thousands of language teachers at their annual convention. But Bill is full of praise for the teachers helping today’s American teens gain their multilingual chops, including one special teacher Bill met in the green room before she went on stage--Ying Jin. She had just won National Language Teacher of the Year--the first Chinese teacher to do so. In this episode, we’ll take you behind the scenes with Bill and Ying to hear what they hope for America.

This episode was written by Steve Leveen, our producer Fernando Hernández (who also does our cool sound design and mixing) and our Francofile French Teacher and associate producer, Beckie Rankin.

Check out the rest of our cast at America the Bilingual dot com, including our brand and editorial director Mim Harrison, editorial consultant Maja Thomas, design director, Carlos Plaza and finally last and least, our bark-lingual mascot, Chet.

Special thanks to Marty Abbott, Michelle van Gelder and Erin Well cher of the Lead with Languages campaign, as well as all the teachers and administrators who came by to be interviewed; we’ll hear their voices in future episodes.

Music in this episode with a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license by (in orden of appearance):

Hank - Dark Country http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Hank/AckrillVenning91/DarkCountry

Kevin Macleod - Quasi motion http://freemusicarchive.org/music/KevinMacLeod/GlobalSampler/Quasi_Motion

Jason Shaw - Travel light http://freemusicarchive.org/music/JasonShaw/AudionautixAcoustic/TRAVELLIGHT_____________________1-53

Jason Shaw - Wheels http://freemusicarchive.org/music/JasonShaw/AudionautixAcoustic/WHEELS_________________3-30

Mystery Mammal - Foreign Produce http://freemusicarchive.org/music/MysteryMammal/Latent/ForeignProduce_1368