February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The schoolteacher explained she still stops and thinks before formulating sentences in Spanish even though she studied it for her university degree. That’s not the case with her first two languages.
“I was raised bilingually in both Irish and English,” she said.
For three decades, she has been able to use that background to teach the Irish language at Cumann na Gaeilge-run classes in the Boston metropolitan area and beyond.
But now in her role as a teacher at Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, Concannon has helped introduce Irish studies, which includes a language component, into the curriculum.
School officials believe the course, which requires students to pass exams to go to the next level, is the first of its type in the country.
It has won praise from visitors from overseas, like Irish government Minister