‘English at your door step’

Brig. Gen. Bill Bender, 86th Airlift Wing and KMC commander, signed a memorandum of agreement June 23 in Kaiserslautern to support a German-English education program that offers “English at your Door Step.”

A partnership between the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, the city of Kaiserslautern and the KMC, the program will provide an English-speaking educator to teach a class to children in both German and English.

The project will begin in September at the Dansenberg “Villa Winzig” preschool in Kaiserslautern.

At that time, the dean of the faculty of social sciences at the technical university will conduct a study to find out how a foreign language impacts children’s development and what effect “bilingualism” has on children ages 2 and 5, according to a recent article in Die Rheinpfalz.

General Bender said he welcomes the opportunity this partnership brings.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for us to foster our relationship with our German neighbors,” the general said. “By helping German preschoolers with English, we are creating a way for both German and American children to interact and learn from one another.”