Before bilingual education, newcomers jumped, swam
Thirty-seven years have passed since Anna Ronca first walked into a classroom at White Street Elementary School in Springfield, but she remembers the day as clearly as yesterday. Fresh from Napoli, Italy, Ronca, then Anna Settembre, knew not a single word of English. There was no special program to help her. To make up for her problem, she was put in second grade instead of third, where she belonged. To add to her problems, the kindergarten teacher frequently brought in her 5-year-old sister who sobbed in bewilderment most of the day. It was Anna's job to comfort her. "It was terrible, just awful," said Ronca, who now lives in Agawam with her husband and 10-year-old daughter in what she calls a traditional Italian-American household. "It was hard, especially at first. The teacher would talk and I had no idea. I didn't know how to ask to go to the bathroom. The only good thing was that we'd go home for lunch," she said. But Ronca, like many children who immigrated to the United States before bilingual education existed, was a quick study. Playing in the neighborhood, listening hard for clues in school, she found that in two or three months she could do most of her class work. Ronca, now a paraprofessional at Pottenger School in Springfield, wishes a formal program had existed for her. But she thinks bilingual education today is overdone. "It's dragged out. Teaching kids in Spanish is fine, but there's got to be a better way. They speak Spanish at home and then they come to school and we give them Spanish books and speak to them in Spanish," she said. Bilingual education has its roots in a 1968 federal law called the Bilingual Education Act, or Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Act. The law provided financial incentives, though no mandates, for making programs for children who speak little or no English. A 1971 state law forced the issue here, requiring programs for non-English speakers. Today, the law mandates that districts set up a transitional bilingual program if there are 20 or more students speaking the same language. The program may be under fire politically, but most educators believe that children need some type of support if they arrive here with few or no English skills. "Absolutely, you can't just ignore the fact that you have children who don't understand our language," said Springfield's acting superintendent, Teresa E. Regina. Regina knows from personal experience. In 1951, her family moved here from Argentina, and she entered third grade at Elias Brookings School. She remembers the struggle of being unable to understand or communicate in class, and believes she was the only Spanish speaker in the building. Still, she supports and has launched changes aimed at moving children into regular classes more quickly. Julio G. Ayala was 7 when his family moved from Puerto Rico to Springfield. He has a memory of his first weeks at the old Carew Street School when he understood little of what went on around him. "It was hard for us in the beginning, but we survived, and look at us now. We're doing fine," he said. Ayala, 49 and a special education teacher at Magnet Middle School in Holyoke, believes that bilingual education has major flaws and should be much more focused on getting children into regular classrooms with support if necessary. "Goals need to be put in place. They should set a time limit, and then enforce it. They should provide support services within the mainstreaming. You can't turn your back on them," Ayala said. Nunzio Bruno was 9 when his family moved to Springfield from Bracigliano, in the south of Italy. He was placed back a year, in third grade, at the old Acushnet Avenue School, and shortly afterwards, attended Howard Street School. The youngest of three, Bruno has fond memories of the time. His family lived in the largely Italian South End, so learning English was a matter of getting help from neighborhood friends and relatives. It made a difference. "We came over in May, so I had all summer before I went to school. During those months, I picked up quite a bit of English," he said. Bruno, 42 and a financial consultant, also remembers getting extra help in English in school for his first month or two for an hour every day. "After that, I was fine. My experience was good. I enjoyed those times," said Bruno, who lives in the South End with his wife and three sons. |