Signs on the door reading “Bienvenida” and “Clase de Espanol” greet visitors to Mireya Diaz’s classroom at Barbara C. Jordan Elementary School in eastern New Orleans.

Inside, books in Spanish line the classroom walls along with colorful displays showing the names of colors, the days of the week, the alphabet, numbers and months of the year in Spanish.

Diaz and her students sing Spanish songs, and she explains the Spanish songs, and she explains the Spanish culture to them “so they can appreciate the culture to them “so they can appreciate the culture and understand other people,” she said.

Jordan students, particularly the kindergarteners, as well as some staff and parents will learn the Spanish language ths year, creating a “community of learners” at the school In fact, for the first time, 25 kindergarteners will take part in a Spanish immersion program that will follow them through the sixth grade, making them proficient in a foreign language that school officials are sure will be beneficial to them long after they leave the school.

“I’m very happy to have the program here,” Jordan Principal Sonya Oliver-Williams said. She laid the groundwork for the Spanish immersion program last year in collaboration with several bilingual-education personnel in the school system. After surveying parents to see if they had any interest in a foreign-language program, she presented the immersion concept to them. The parents indicated they wanted their children to receive instruction in Spanish, with an immersion program for the kindergarteners, Oliver-Williams said.

Parents chose Spanish because they felt “students would have more opportunities to use the Spanish language,” Oliver-Williams said, noting that New Orleans has a large Spanish-speaking population.

Parents such as PTO President Cora Monroe and Vice President Gladys Bowman are pleased with the program and are planning to learn the language, too.

New Orleans is a gateway to Central America, with a great deal of trade and constant flow to activity between New Orleans and Spanish-speaking countries, said Charlotte Steber, director of Bilingual/English as a Second Language and Foreign Language Programs for the Orleans Parish school system.

“This creates a job market with the need for bilingual Spanish-speaking people,” she said. Besides the new program at Jordan, the school system has language immersion programs in Spanish at Fisk-Howard Elementary School and in French at Audubon Montessori School, with a modified Vietnamese language immersion program at Village de l’Est School, Steber said.

She said research shows that students who are exposed to a foreign language for an extended time at an early age often outperform their peers who have not been exposed to a foreign language when both take standardized tests measuring certain language-arts competencies and skills.

Diaz, a native of Nicaragua, came to New Orleans 10 years ago and has been teaching Spanish in public schools for the past six years. She came to the school system through the Cordell Hull Foundation, which provides associate teachers of Spanish to the city’s public schools througha contract with the state.

After her contract with the foundation was completed, Diaz remained with the school system and became a certified elementary school teacher. This is her first year at Jordan. She taught earlier at Osborne, McDonogh No. 32 and Harriet Tubman elementary schools.

Kindergarteners spend the morning hours in their regular class, then have about three hours of Spanish instruction with Diaz in the afternoon. When not teaching them, Diaz goes to other classrooms to teach Spanish as a Second Language.

Steber said that for the school to have a complete immersion program, it will need to have additional Spanish teachers assigned to it so that each year an additional grade can be added to the program.

If this happens and if the kindergarteners continue in the immersion program, Diaz said, by the fifth grade they will be able to speak, read and write Spanish proficiently.



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