About a dozen teachers, most of them from China and Spain, are receiving intensive training this week as they prepare for their assignments in a new Delaware education initiative — dual-language immersion programs for kindergarten and first-grade students at three elementary schools. (See previous coverage here)
More than 300 students will start learning a new language as they begin their school careers — Spanish at Lewis Elementary in Wilmington and John M. Clayton Elementary in Frankford and Mandarin Chinese at McIlvane Early Childhood Center in Magnolia.
State and school officials discuss the Delaware World Language Immersion Program.
State and school officials discuss the Delaware World Language Immersion Program.
Gov. Jack Markell, who developed the Governor’s World Language Expansion Initiative as sees the program as an economic development tool for the state, greeted the new teachers Tuesday during their training program at Lewis Elementary.
“We want our kids to be able to seize so many new opportunities, and so many of these opportunities may involve speaking in another language,” he said. “We do a disservice if we lead them to believe that if so long as they speak English they’ll do just fine.”
In an immersion program, students have two teachers, said Greg Fulkerson, education associate for world languages at the state Department of Education. An English-speaking teacher will provide a half-day of instruction in English, language arts and vocabulary, and a Chinese- or Spanish-speaking teacher will provide instruction in math, science, social studies and the world language. Each teacher will see 40 to 50 students each day and, outside the classroom, the teachers will work together, keeping track of what the other has covered so there is an appropriate overlap between lessons, Fulkerson said.
Teachers in the Delaware World Language Immersion Program offer their goals and expectations for the program.
Teachers in the Delaware World Language Immersion Program offer their goals and expectations for the program.
One of the new Spanish-speaking teachers at Lewis Elementary is Beatriz Cervantes, the California-born and-raised daughter of Mexican immigrants. A 2010 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College who came to Delaware to work in high-need schools through the Teach for America program, Cervantes said she thinks her biggest challenge will be “keeping the Spanish language consistent in the classroom.”
Although she is a native English speaker, she said she learned during her first day of training that “the most important thing is not to let students know that you know English.” If you do, she explained, they will expect her to translate for them.
She said she expects to be saying “no sé,” Spanish for “I don’t know” fairly often.
About 100 kindergartners and 120 first-graders will participate in the immersion program at Lewis Elementary, Assistant Principal Amy O’Neill said.
An Wei, from Liaoning province in northeast China, said she considers it “an honor” to teach in Delaware at McIlvane. The state recruits Chinese teachers for the program through an agreement it has with Hanban (its full name is the Chinese Language Council International), a Chinese government agency that provides teachers who want to work overseas for up to three years, Fulkerson said.
“We want to communicate with the local people. We can influence the future understanding [between the two nations],” An said.
Echoing Markell’s economic development theme, she said that learning Chinese “is a benefit for the children here, [as] they can find a better job.” And, she added, “we can learn more about the American culture.”
Li Jing Jing, from Guangxi, a province in southern China, said she has already learned some differences between the Chinese and U.S. education systems. One of the most notable is class size. Here, she said, she will be working each day with two groups of about 25 students. “In China, I have more than 50 students at one time, so there is a big difference.”
She said it may be a challenge for her to adapt to the opportunity to provide more individualized instruction here than she would be able to offer in China.
Another difference Li noted is that American children “have more fun when they are in class.” But, she quickly added, “also they have some stress.”
McIlvane will enroll 100 kindergarten students in its Mandarin Chinese immersion program and 45 kindergarten students at Clayton Elementary will participate in its Spanish immersion program.
Markell and Fulkerson are projecting steady growth for the immersion programs, with yearly expansion to 10, then 15, then 20 schools by 2015. By 2020, when current kindergarten students are in eighth grade, statewide enrollments are projected to reach 8,000 students.
Although there are no current plans to expand the program beyond Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, Fulkerson said he hopes other languages can be added. Utah, a larger state whose model Delaware is using, began with immersion programs in three languages and expanded to five within four years, he said.
The program’s goals, Markell said, are to give students sufficient proficiency that, by fourth grade, “they can take their families to other countries and be able to navigate” and, by ninth grade, they are able to pass an Advanced Placement exam in their language.
Building language skills to that level will benefit students as they advance into high school and college and eventually enter the job market, Markell said.
“Our economy is very different than it used to be,” he said. “We’re much more interconnected with other countries around the world.”
