Bilingual Honors for Bilingual Students

Pr. George's Seniors End 13-Year Program With Ceremony at French Embassy

Reginald Andrews Jr. is a star running back at Central High School in Capitol Heights, and he’s not a bad wrestler, either. But the skills that really win him attention among his peers are strictly verbal: He speaks French.

Take the time he was working in a McDonald’s last summer and a group of foreign tourists was baffled by the nuances of the quarter-pounder with cheese.

“I said, ‘Est-ce que je peux vous aidez?’ ” Andrews recalled yesterday. “Just asking them if I could help them in French made them feel better. My co-workers were shocked.”

Andrews, a senior, and a dozen of his classmates were honored at the French Embassy in Washington yesterday as the first students in the mid-Atlantic region to complete a K-12 bilingual program, emerging fluent in both French and English.

The Prince George’s French immersion program, offered at two elementary schools, two middle schools and Central High, is one of the most advanced language programs in the country. While many school districts, including Montgomery and Fairfax, offer language programs in elementary schools, Prince George’s is one of the few on the East Coast that offers a continuous and comprehensive bilingual education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

“This shows how immersion works: that these people, who for 13 years studied in French, are now fluent,” said Dominique Malicet, the French Embassy’s cultural attache. “And in a world where everybody talks about globalization, they’re already ahead.”

The Prince George’s immersion program was one of several magnet programs developed by the county in the late 1980s, when the school system was inventing ways to foster the voluntary integration of schools.

Jonis Belu-John remembers his mother anxiously camping out all night so she could sign him up. He also remembers his own reaction being less enthusiastic.

“The first year, I was in awe,” he said. “I was like, ‘What is this? Why am I here? Why can’t I speak English like everyone else is doing in their classes?’ But I picked it up pretty well because that’s all we spoke, French.”

Isabella Rouse enrolled her daughter, Donna Jackson, in the program after looking into the science and math magnet schools.

“They got more exposure, traveled, did things you do not usually do in school,” Rouse said of the immersion program. “I wanted a lot of diverse things for her, and this program did that.”

In the program, elementary students are taught the standard American curriculum in French for most of the day–the exceptions being gym class and English literature. In middle school and high school, students learn reading, writing, science and math in English, but take two periods of social sciences in French.

Sometimes, the students said yesterday, it was a daunting task to keep up.

Ainsley Delissaint, whose French-speaking father signed him up for the immersion program, said he started doubting whether he’d be able to keep up when he reached middle school and some of his original classmates dropped out of the program.

“My parents said it was my decision,” Delissaint said. “I finally decided that I’ve been in there so long, it didn’t seem right for me to jump. . . . I had prepared for this since kindergarten.”

Most of the students’ parents chose to start them in the program. But at the middle and high school levels, they made their own decisions to stick with it.

As they grew older, students said, they began to appreciate their ability through a standard high school measuring stick: peer reaction.

“My friends always say, ‘You should say something in French to me,’ ” Alicsha Sharpe said. “I say, ‘Why? Y’all are not going to understand what I’m saying.’ But they think it’s good because they take French 1 and 2 and they don’t get anywhere.”

Belu-John, whose younger brother also is in the county’s French immersion program, uses his fluency to his advantage–sometimes to his parents’ chagrin.

“My brother and I, whenever we want to talk about my parents, we make comments in French and they can’t understand us,” Belu-John, who plans to major in international business and aspires to be a diplomat, said with a grin.

As for Andrews, he plans to major in business and start a restaurant–possibly an international chain.

He figures his language skills will come in handy, even if the most popular menu item is a Big Mac. “There’s no translation for that,” Andrews said. “That’s a pretty universal concept.”

Students in a rigorous Prince George’s French program greet well-wishers after a ceremony at the French Embassy. From left are Reginald Andrews Jr., Heavenly Hicks, Alicsha Sharpe, Kolea Bosse, Kimberly Webb, Lajeral Churchwell and Ainsley Delissaint.



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