Bilingual Education Subject Of Debate

Florida educators are watching California, where voters decided immigrant children instead should have English-immersion instruction.

 

“Florida has never had a mandate that school districts have to have bilingual education. We cvan make decisions locally about the kinds of strategies and methodologies for how to best teach our children. We don’t really see it as an issue here.” – Anna Garcia-Meehan, Palm Beach County schools

 

It’s a fact of life in South Florida.

 

Students from Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti integrate into local schools. Many of them are children of migrant farm workers. Few speak English when they arrive on the Treasure Coast.

 

In Martin and St. Lucie counties, those students mainly take English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Some teachers speak Spanish, and tutors and translators are available for students and families. Both districts say they are committed to meeting the needs of children who speak other languages.

 

But California’s Proposition 227, which passed Tuesday with 61 percent of the vote, aims to eliminate the bilingual education that the state’s public schools have offered for 30 years. Students who don’t speak English would be sent to a one-year English immersion program.

 

Opponents have filed a class-action lawsuit seeking an injunction against the order, which gives public schools 60 days to implement the measure.

 

California’s bilingual program trains students primarily in their native language and eases them into English, unlike Florida’s program, in which most students are immersed in English-speaking classes while receiving special tutoring services.

 

Florida educators are watching the situation in California closely, knowing that Florida often follows trends set in the West.

 

Ray Parrish, principal at Warfield Elementary School in Indiantown, said not using Spanish to educate Spanish-speaking children is comparable to neglecting someone because of gender, race or left-handedness.

 

“Not to do anything in Spanish, that is unrealistic,” Parrish said. At his school, which has one of the most diverse populations in Martin County, seven of every 10 students are from a foreign country.

 

Many come in young and need help from translators and tutors to gain English proficiency, but it is a system that works.

 

“The younger kids, they pick up the language very, very quickly,” Parrish said.

 

Marla Lee, principal at Indiantown Middle School, said students are adept and will usually learn English without too much struggle. Teachers at her school either have or are working toward ESOL endorsements, she said.

 

In addition to aides and ESOL teachers, Florida teachers with non-English speakers in their classrooms have an ESOL endorsement, meaning they have taken five college courses to learn how to reach the children. They can use repetition, hands-on activities and illustrations to help students who do not understand the language they’re speaking.

 

In St. Lucie County, Ken Mockler uses coffeepots as props or pretends to play basketball to teach new words.

 

At C.A. Moore Elementary in Fort Pierce, he tries to speak only in English to his students who are growing up in families that speak Spanish, Creole, Arabic or other languages.

 

“We wouldn’t be able to help all of them if we were speaking Spanish in class, so we try to meet all of the needs of students,” said Mockler, who speaks Spanish, German and a little French as part of his work as an ESOL teacher.

 

The diversity of students in St. Lucie County schools is a reason bilingual education would not work here, Mockler said. A constant shortage of teachers in Florida, especially those who speak more than one language, would make it difficult and costly to provide bilingual instruction to all non-English speakers.

 

“In bilingual education, students have to learn one set of rules in Spanish and another set of rules in English,” Mockler said. “They’re translating, and it’s time-consuming and confusing for the children.”

 

For students who have never been enrolled in school, immersion, teaching them in English only, is not the best answer, said Ray Ramirez, an ESOL teacher at Southern Oaks Middle School in Port St. Lucie.

 

“When you have students who have never been in school in their country, when they come here, they’re at a big disadvantage because they don’t have skills in their first language,” Ramirez said.

 

But some educators say classes taught in two languages can slow the learning process for younger students who are trying to learn basic grammar and vocabulary.

 

Almost 20 percent of the 27,000-plus students in St. Lucie County do not speak English as their native language. Most of those speak Spanish or Haitian-Creole, but educators hear more than a dozen languages in their classes across the county.

 

Schools Superintendent Bill Vogel said when he worked in Osceola County, the school district reevaluated its ESOL program and examined bilingual education when the county had a large influx of Hispanic parents and children.

 

“We and the community felt the ESOL approach would meet our needs more than the bilingual,” Vogel said. “We added evening programs for parents because they needed to learn the language to find employment. Working together, the ESOL programs were more effective because the child seemed to learn the language quicker.”

 

Vogel said he sees the same results in St. Lucie County and thinks the county’s methods best meet the needs of a diverse population.

 

Ramirez said he thinks St. Lucie’s programs are effective but that the students could benefit from bilingual education “if done properly.”

 

“Basically we’re out here to meet the needs of the students,” he said.

 

From a statewide perspective, Education Commissioner Frank Brogan said state-sponsored ESOL programs work best for Florida’s children.

 

“We have a very different system than the bilingual education program in California,” said Brogan, a former Martin County superintendent of schools.

 

California’s program keeps students on a dual-language track, sometimes throughout their entire education.

 

Since the 1970s, Florida has worked to help students master English in a three-year program, with full English usage as the ultimate goal. Brogan said about 160,000 students move through the ESOL program each year, with the largest numbers of students concentrated in South Florida.

 

“It has served Florida well,” he said. “It seems to be very well received, by parents especially.”

 

But Anna Garcia-Meehan, director of the international student support department in the Palm Beach County School District, is a staunch supporter of programs that emphasize both languages. Garcia-Meehan criticizes traditional ESOL programs, saying young Spanish-speaking children who learn English in schools tend to lose their native language, becoming monolingual.

 

Immersion in English translates into alienation for those students, she said, and mastery of more than one language enriches the ability to master vocabulary and decipher word meanings.

 

“Using the native language as a vehicle for learning a new language is really important,” she said.

 

The implementation of dual language programs in three Palm Beach County elementary schools by next fall will encourage bilingualism for Spanish and English speakers. English-speaking children learn Spanish; Spanish-speaking children learn English.

 

“All of the children benefit because they all have been exposed to two languages,” Garcia-Meehan said. “It really is an ideal situation.”

 

Garcia-Meehan said she is not worried about the state changing directions for its language programs.

 

“Florida has never had a mandate that school districts have to have bilingual education,” she said. “We can make decisions locally about the kinds of strategies and methodologies for how to best teach our children. We don’t really see it as an issue here.”

 

Brogan said there has been no discussion of English immersion for Spanish-speaking students.

 

“Largely, people seem to be rather satisfied with the approach that we have taken,” he said. “But there’s no telling what the future will hold.”

 



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