Bilingual education now taught in 170 languages in Miami schools
MIAMI BEACH, Fla.---In Joan Belkin's summer school class for first graders learning English, the letter of the day is "P" and the lesson plan calls for an imaginary picnic. Maria Montero holds a picture of a parrot. Seated at one of three long wooden tables, Alejandro Diaz cups his small hands around a green pepper. His classmates munch on chunks of pineapple, slices of pickles and pieces of popcorn, repeating the words in English. Gregorio Rovetto, a new student from Argentina with a fresh summer crewcut, rises to the challenge when Belkin asks her students to name a container of Pringles' pizza-flavored potato chips. "Pizza!" Gregorio yells, spying the pizza slice on the container. "That's his first word. Gregory. Say it again," Belkin says. "Gregory! Pizza potato chips." Her summer students at North Beach Elementary come from Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Argentina, representing the sea-change that has taken place in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in Miami-Dade schools, the nation's fourth-largest school district. In the past, school officials say, most foreign-speaking students came from Cuba. But in the last decade, the district's foreign-born students have diversified to include more students from the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and beyond. "We're no longer dealing with Spanish only," said Lourdes Rovira, the district's director of bilingual education. "We're dealing with Spanish and Creole and Portuguese and Russian and Chinese. The diversity of languages has exploded." Students born in 170 different countries attend schools in the district, fueling a 23 percent increase in enrollment since 1990. An average of 1,471 new foreign-born students enroll in the Miami-Dade schools each month. More than 62,000 students take ESOL classes, up from more than 40,000 in 1990. In Florida, 188,852 students were enrolled in ESOL programs in the 2000-2001 school year, compared to 83,993 in the 1990-91 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education. While Rovira welcomes the diversity, she says it makes it difficult to keep low class size ratios, find textbooks in some languages and dialects and teachers who can help instruct students in their native tongue. When Rovira began running bilingual education in the district in 1991, she had a team of 15 foreign language teachers roving the district to teach students in nine different languages. The multilingual team has grown to 35 staffers, teaching in languages such as Arabic, Tagalog, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese and Kanjobal, a Mayan dialect. The staff of Portuguese instructors has more than doubled. The expansion of language instruction reflects recent federal census data released for Miami-Dade. Hispanics increased by 35 percent since 1990 to nearly 1.3 million. Among nationalities disclosed in 1990, Mexicans increased by 65 percent, Cubans grew by 15 percent and Puerto Ricans expanded by 10 percent. The county has nearly 130,000 residents from Central America, with more than half from Nicaragua, and more than 154,000 people from South America, with nearly half from Colombia. The 1991 census material did not classify individual countries within Latin America. At North Beach Elementary, an open-halled school of pink pastels just blocks from the sand and surf of South Beach, enrollment in the ESOL program has doubled since 1992. The school used to enroll some foreign-born children whose parents would spend the winter months on the beach. Now, principal Aida Marrero says, foreign-born students are constantly enrolling. "In January, when they come back it's like the first day of school in terms of registrations," Marrero said. "From January until two days before the end of the school year we were registering kids." The curriculum calls for the teaching of children in English with some time for instruction in math and science in the student's native language. For her students entering first grade this fall, Belkin structures her class so students can use different senses to learn English. She asks them to repeat words in English, develops a "picnic" theme - complete with teddy bears sitting around a table - to help her children build their vocabulary, and lets her students handle pineapple slices, pudding and pasta as they learn the words. The district continues to reach out for more teachers to become certified in ESOL and is working with Nova Southeastern University in Miami to create a master's program for teachers of Creole to help serve the city's growing Haitian-American community. It's hard work, but teachers say it's another wave of immigration that has become common in Miami. "We keep pushing," Belkin says. "We want them out - to go out on their own." |