Family Cafe
Kindergartners in Suzanne Jacquez-Gorman's class at Nava Elementary School are acquiring language skills -- with a twist. Este es el Hokey Pokey!" teaching assistant Thelma Tapia announces as she cues up a CD. The children catch on quickly, without needing translations. Standing in a circle, they shake it all about to a Spanish version of the popular children's sing-along. Next door, teacher Jackie Trujillo reads the English-language story "Snow Dance" to her kindergartners. Then they recite a poem, also in English, with accompanying hand and body motions. Halfway through the school day, the children switch rooms, teachers and languages. These are participants in Nava's fledgling dual language program. Though it will be the first such schoolwide program in Santa Fe, dual language is a growing nationwide trend in bilingual education. Studies show it to be the most effective method for achieving mastery of two languages. The dual language model involves extensive periods of instruction in two languages, explains Polly Beckmon Zazueta, a Santa Fe Public Schools teacher resource specialist with an emphasis on bilingual education. Students spend half the school day learning in their native language, and half in a second language. They learn language skills, core subjects such as science and math, art, music, even physical education, in both languages. Students are not submersed in the new language -- that anxiety-provoking experience anybody knows who has been in a foreign country without anyone nearby to translate. Instead, Zazueta explains, "They're immersed in a controlled environment, with a teacher who knows how to divvy up the material into meaningful chunks, at a level they're able to receive." Nava introduced its dual-language kindergarten last year, with $ 20,000 seed money from the state Department of Education's Bilingual Multicultural Division. This year, they added a first grade to the program, and a new class will be added each year until it is schoolwide. The key factor to these programs' effectiveness, Zazueta explains, is that each language must be presented in an uninterrupted block, with no translation back and forth. "Whatever we're doing, even eating snack, we're speaking Spanish," Jacquez-Gorman says. When children ask questions in English during their Spanish section, the teacher might restate it in Spanish and answer in that language. Most bilingual classes in Santa Fe public schools feature an instructional method called concurrent translation, Zazueta explains; the teacher switches back and forth between English and Spanish. he problem with concurrent translation is that students generally tune out words spoken in their nonnative language if they know they'll hear them immediately in their own language, and little understanding is built. Typically, they're lucky to come away knowing the colors, numbers, days of the week and words to Feliz Cumpleanos. "In a dual language model," Zazueta contrasts, "both languages get equal time. Both cultures get equal time. It fosters multiculturalism in teachers and students." Everyone concedes that dual language requires more of teachers. Partners in each bilingual teaching pair must plan lessons together, since students spend half a day with each. Lesson plans require whole-language techniques, with activities that engage children's hands and bodies. "When children are doing something with their hands," Trujillo says, "they completely lose fear of what's coming out of their mouths. You'll hear them say a new word over and over. You've omitted that fear of speaking in isolation; it's all in context." First grade Spanish teacher Julietta Lozano, one of five bilingual teachers recruited from Spain last year for the Santa Fe Public Schools by then-director of curriculum Bobbie Gutierrez, takes her students outside for a lesson on the playground. They repeat the Spanish words for above, below, inside, up and down, while moving around the play equipment. It's a technique language specialists call "total physical response:" experiencing language with the body, to cement the learning process. Although schools with larger non-English speaking immigrant populations might seem better suited for a school-wide dual language curriculum, the commitment of Nava's faculty and principal drive their program. "It's a gift to be able to hear and understand in two languages," Jacquez-Gorman says. "It's enrichment, not subtraction." Initially, some parents were skeptical, principal Eileen Churchill recalls. "Now that they see their children come home talking in Spanish, talking to their grandparents in Spanish, singing songs, they're so excited." Grandparents, who previously couldn't speak in their native language to their little ones, frequently come to Churchill at school events and thank her. At a time when many states are passing English-Only initiatives, there's a political subtext to dual-language programs. Proponents hope to show not only that they are effective in helping students master two languages, but that bilingual/biliterate students are better educated, more employable in a global economy, more likely to complete school than they would have been. "We're taking big gulps and hoping it won't happen here," Zazueta says of laws passed in California and Arizona that ended bilingual education in public schools. We may have a buffer from our state constitution, which established New Mexico as a bilingual state, but in the right political climate that statute could be undone. Zazueta is planning a community forum on dual language education this spring. For information call her at 471-2732; or Rick Gutierrez, SFPS Bilingual and Title I Director, at 954-2536. Claudette Sutton, editor of Tumbleweeds, Santa Fe's family newspaper, can be reached at tumbleweeds@trail.com. |