CARPENTERSVILLE – More than a half-dozen Jacobs High School students spent Wednesday morning using their Spanish language skills outside of school, interacting with Hispanic residents at the Carpentersville FISH Food Pantry.

The opportunity to use Spanish in a practical setting, without textbooks, was a first for eight students from a Jacobs' advanced Spanish class.

"Why not use their Spanish in a real-life setting?" teacher Nancy Gullickson said. "The stuff in textbooks, when they get up to the [advanced] level is not enough anymore. They have to be able to apply it in the real world, so this is one way I can do it."