Cody Smith, a Barren County High School senior, was recently awarded a language scholarship. The scholarship will promote his interests in pursuing a career as a language educator. This portrait of Smith was photographed at Beaver Trail Park in Glasgow, Ky. Monday, Sept. 21, 2020.
(BRENNAN CRAIN/WCLU NEWS)
GLASGOW, Ky. – To speak well is one accomplishment. But to speak several languages well is outstanding.
Barren County High School senior Cody Smith was recently named the recipient of the Ken Stewart Future Language Educator Scholarship.
Smith has a love for learning languages. He’s known around BCHS as a polyglot, which means he speaks and comprehends multiple languages. He has taken AP Latin and French. He’s also learning Japanese outside of school. He is also pursuing AP Spanish Language and Literature exams this spring.
“It really means a lot, and it really goes farther than the thousand dollars that’s being awarded,” Smith said. “This is coming from an organization that is particularly focused on language in this region.”
Smith is also a mentor and tutor. He earned a TESOL certification to tutor students of English as a second language. He was also the recipient of a Virtual National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship, which enabled him to study Arabic for 10 weeks. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
While he studied Latin in a classroom, the class was phased out by Kentucky Education Television. Smith then took to learning Latin himself and later became a tutor. He’s developed a love of Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus, according to a news release from SCOLT.
The scholarship was started in 2019 by Ken Stewart, a Spanish teacher. He started the scholarship to address the growing need of qualified language teachers in the country. The award is worth $1,000.
Smith will receive the scholarship at the Southern Conference on Language Teaching annual conference on March 19.
Smith plans to attend Western Kentucky University in the fall to pursue majors in Spanish and Chinese. He also plans to minor in linguistics.
The Barren County student was chosen from a number of states’ applicants including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.