Lynn Classical dept. head honored

LYNN – Classical High School Foreign Language Department Head Youness Elbousty has been recognized as an emerging leader by the Phi Delta Kappa Emerging Leader Program for his dedication to service, research and education.PDK is a global association of education professionals and the Emerging Leader Program recognizes 24 of the top educators worldwide under the age of 40 from a stack of hundreds of applicants, based on outstanding professional accomplishments.Elbousty was notified of the award Monday and will be honored at the 2009 PDK summit in Indianapolis later this year.During his career, Elbousty has taught French, Arabic, Italian, German, Finnish and English at schools and universities both in his native Morocco and the United States.He is also the president and founder of Education is a Treasure, a non-profit charity that aims to improve the educational experiences of underprivileged children in rural Morocco.While the award is not necessarily because of his foreign language work at Classical, Elbousty says he wants people to see the honor as an award for the school, where he is hoping to expand the foreign language program.”This is a really prestigious award and honor for our school,” he said. “I want this to be a Lynn Classical High School honor, not just an honor for myself.”Along with his work with his own charitable organization, Elbousty is a member of several professional organizations, including PDK International, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and the American Educational Research Association.Earlier this year, he was one of a select group of educators to win a research and study grant from the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C. and the International Cultural Services.Elbousty says that while he is the foreign language head at Classical, his goal is to get all of the students in Lynn started on the right track with learning another language. Much of his work comes in the elementary and middle schools, along with Classical.”Success comes through with hard work,” he said. “Generally, students enter a foreign language class with the mindset that they won’t do well and we have to combat that.”As a result of the award, Elbousty will be featured in the National Chronicle of Higher Education and National Public Radio.