Young Alumna Making Big Impact Five Years Into Her Teaching Career

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Jessica Sliger with her husband, Brent, and son, Garrett

Jessica Fay Sliger may not be in Freddie Bowles’ classes any more, but the former student-teacher duo has evolved into a team that collaborates on research and enrichment activities that benefit area students.

“The University of Arkansas gave me so much,” said Sliger, who is the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the College of Education and Health Professions. “I love being a Razorback and I love living in Northwest Arkansas because it allows me to be able to work with the UA on so many things. Dr. Bowles is my mentor. I love that she has allowed me to work with her.”

Bowles is an associate professor of foreign language education.

Sliger said she was blown away when she learned she had won the award because there were other people who were nominated who were deserving of it.

“It felt like a huge honor to be nominated,” she said.

Sliger teaches Spanish both as a foreign language and as a heritage language to Spanish-speakers at Rogers High School. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies in 2007 and a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in 2008.

“People at my school were so sweet,” she said about Rogers High. “They were very proud. For students to see their teacher be successful is important, and winning this award encourages me to continue to do my best work and be a professional. I think as teachers we all work so hard and for teachers to be recognized for their hard work is very meaningful.”

Bowles was a crucial element to her success, said Sliger, who said the award belongs as much to Bowles as to her.

“In my master’s program, Dr. Bowles talked about ideas with me,” Sliger said. “She encouraged me to start the Hispanic Scholar Campus Day and helped me implement it, and together we created a regional Spanish language poetry slam to celebrate Hispanic heritage month.”

The poetry slam has grown to draw an audience of 200 people, and it will be hosted next year by Springdale High School as it continues to attract more students from other schools. On the annual Hispanic Scholar Campus Day, begun in 2007, Sliger and other teachers bring Hispanic students to the University of Arkansas campus to visit and learn more about attending the university.

“One of the collaborations I’m most proud of is one Dr. Bowles and I started last year to figure out a way to gauge Spanish speakers’ improvement in their literacy skills,” Sliger said. “I have students in my classes who have spoken Spanish all their lives but are illiterate in Spanish. I teach them to read and write Spanish, and Dr. Bowles came and worked with me.”

The pair recorded students reading at various times in the semester, comparing the recordings each time for improvements in fluency, intonation and punctuation. Bowles and Sliger were assisted by Rachel Story, a student currently in the M.A.T. program, who interned under Sliger and also assisted with the poetry slam. Bowles presented the findings at a conference in November of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a conference Sliger wasn’t able to attend because it coincided with the due date of her baby, Garrett. Sliger is married to Brent Sliger, a strong supporter of her commitment to her students ever since they started dating when she began the M.A.T. program.

“People at the conference said they hadn’t heard of a lot of work being done with high school students, that most research about heritage speakers of Spanish has been done with students at the collegiate level,” Sliger said. “They wanted more information about successful literacy strategies used with teenagers illiterate in their own language.”

One goal behind the poetry slam was to get students interested in reading and writing in a fun way, she said.

“We wanted to start the school year with accessible reading and writing tasks so the kids can feel successful,” Sliger said. “We were able to get the kids excited about the performance. They wanted to show off what they were doing. Parents came and supported their kids.”

The experience was cathartic for some students, who told their stories of crossing the U.S. border and about life in America. They learned about similes and metaphors, skills that allowed one girl to write about being raped. She wrote about being in a storm and surviving the thunder and lightning.

“She was able to get up in front of a crowd and tell a personal and tragic story, yet not reveal too much,” Sliger said. “Some of the students talked about love found and love lost. It was a really great experience for them. Identity was a common theme. A lot wrote about what it means to be Latino in Northwest Arkansas.”

Sliger was inspired by her love of poetry, which she attributes to her grandmother, who was the poet laureate of Colombia.

Sliger has traveled to more than 25 countries in her own study-abroad experiences and was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes Group Project Abroad Grant. She and Bowles have received several grants to fund their work together and several travel grants to present their research at state and national conferences. Sliger was awarded the Hèroes de Corazón Award given in primary and secondary education by the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting in 2011.

She completed the Invitational Summer Institute of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, which is based in the College of Education and Health Professions, in 2010 and continues to work with the project to promote literacy for her students. She also serves as a mentor teacher to Master of Arts in Teaching students.

A former student of Sliger’s who wrote a letter in support of her nomination for the award included a long list of Sliger’s accomplishments and ended with a personal note. The young woman said Sliger realized she came from an impoverished background and led a group of teachers to collect items for her that included clothing, shoes, a jacket and a laptop computer.

The woman said attending the Hispanic Scholar Campus Day and the poetry slam, as well as Sliger’s other influence, gave her the ability to plan a future that included higher education.

“No one in my family had ever gone to college,” she said. “Jessica made me realize my potential.”

The college will honor Sliger at its commencement ceremony May 11 along with Betty Winfield, recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award in Education, and Gretchen Oliver, recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award in Health and Human Services. Profiles of Winfield and Oliver appeared in Arkansas Newswire earlier this week.