English-speaking 6-year-old goes to Spanish-speaking kindergarten

WALLA WALLA, Wash.—Six-year-old Seth Hall speaks English at home, but at Blue Ridge Elementary School he’s making his way through kindergarten in Spanish.

It’s an experimental approach to bilingual education in Walla Walla, one that Principal Linda Boggs hopes will have fifth-graders leaving her school fluent in English and Spanish.

“This is the time to do it, rather than middle school or high school,” she said.

Seth was chosen for the experiment because his mother, Brenda Hall, is a bilingual specialist at the school. She could tutor Seth at home to keep up his native English skills.

During the first month, Seth couldn’t speak or understand Spanish. He learned to watch what others were doing.

“He looks around. He never asks for help. He tries to figure it out himself,” said kindergarten teacher Joyce Rivera.

She translated her classroom instructions at first, but because the purpose of the class was Spanish, she asked bilingual students to explain things to him and told him to raise his hand if he didn’t understand.

“He was just totally lost,” Rivera said. “His head was down because, of course, he wasn’t understanding.”

Hall said her usually outgoing child became clingy and cried a couple of times when she wasn’t there.

Rivera was sufficiently worried about his level of comprehension that in November, she considered moving him to an English-speaking kindergarten.

But some test scores changed her mind.

The exams showed that Seth had low scores in Spanish comprehension, but not the lowest in his class, and his English comprehension scores were higher than some of the students in the English-speaking classes.

“We are just amazed. Every day is just coming together,” Rivera said.

Seth can count and say the alphabet in Spanish. His interaction with other students increasingly includes Spanish.

“He’s even reading some basic words in Spanish. It’s very good,” Rivera said.

Seth said he likes class. He speaks to friends mostly in English, but they respond in English and Spanish.

At home, Seth tells his mother the words he has learned, and checks with her to make sure he understood properly.

“He’s starting to talk in Spanish, and here we are four months down the road,” Hall said. “I know this happens, but to watch it in your own child is really amazing.”

She hopes to keep Seth in Spanish-speaking classes until third grade, when the classes are integrated with English.

Boggs isn’t sure where the experiment will take the curriculum.

“It’s really in just the baby steps of looking at the research and what parents are thinking,” she said.

Boggs wants more community advice before deciding whether to expand the experiment beyond Seth.

“He doesn’t know he’s a guinea pig in some respects,” Boggs said. “But we didn’t go into it lightly.”



Comments are closed.