Thread: CA:2 more schools considered for bilingual immersion

2 more schools considered for bilingual immersion
DISTRICT SEEKING INPUT FROM PARENTS
By Mayra Flores de Marcotte
Bay Area News Group
Article Launched: 03/03/2008 01:32:07 AM PST



Following on the footsteps of an already successful model, San Jose Unified School District is looking to expand its two-way bilingual immersion program to more elementary schools.

The district has been conducting studies to determine whether Willow Glen and Walter Bachrodt elementary schools could offer such a program at their campuses - and to see if there is enough demand to warrant the program.

District officials have met with parent groups and staff to gauge the reaction to the proposed program.

"Implementation will only happen if the community wants it. This is just the exploratory phase," said Maria Alzugaray, a San Jose Unified bilingual resource teacher. "These meetings have been amazingly positive."

The district was initially looking to expand the program to seven schools, said Norma Martinez-Palmer, the district's director of bilingual education and special programs. "We then narrowed it down to three, and now the two we are talking to," she said.

California has 201 two-way bilingual immersion programs. And within San Jose Unified, there are already two schools that offer the program, Gardner and River Glen elementary schools.

River Glen is the model for all future programs. The school has offered the two-way immersion program since 1986 as a magnet school.

Unlike River Glen, the programs being proposed at Willow Glen and Bachrodt will be offered in "strands" rather than to the whole school, allowing parents to continue having options for their children's education, Martinez-Palmer said.
"We need to allow a place for everyone," she said.

Willow Glen Elementary Principal Dayle D'Anna is receptive to the idea.

"I welcome this conversation, however it goes," D'Anna said. "Willow Glen is hot either way."

In Canada, the education system has immersion programs in which young students learn French along with English. The immersion program has been so successful that the model was used throughout the United States.

U.S. dual-immersion programs are now available in German, French, Japanese and Spanish.

In 1986, California took the best of its existing bilingual and immersion programs and formed a two-way bilingual immersion pilot program.

The first necessary element was the program's duration. It had to be established to operate for a minimum of five to seven years to allow it to succeed. The second factor was a monolingual approach, meaning the languages would be separated and taught one at a time.

The third element was that students would learn from one another. The fourth was training for the teachers. The fifth would be maintaining high academic standards, even before those standards were implemented statewide. The sixth was parent input.

The seventh element was an interactive model, and teachers and students share time to talk and interact.

School districts that were chosen to be part of this pilot program included San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica.

The first school in San Jose to have the program was Washington School. From there, the program moved to the River Glen location.

Willow Glen was chosen because of its central location. Students come from all over San Jose to attend the magnet school.

The district has until March to make its decision whether to create a program at Willow Glen Elementary to implement in the fall of 2008. There would be 20 English-speaking students and 20 Spanish-speaking students in each kindergarten classroom.
http://www.mercurynews.com/localnewshea ... ci_8434868

I don't like this. If I understand this correctly, at those schools in which this program is implemented, students will be forced to learn spanish?

And I love the example they give about Canada and learing French and English. First, with the exception of Quebec, the majority of the children speak English and are legal residents of that country. They are all learning French together.

There is a big difference when one group does not understand English and are mixed in a classroom with students who are being required to learn spanish.

It seems to me this is just another tricky way to mainstream bi-lingual education.