New language program has schools talking

2 HISD campuses targeted for fall

A foreign language pilot program for two Humble Independent School District elementary campuses is taking flight, after being grounded for more than two years.

The Spanish-language program originally had been scheduled for Bear Branch and Pine Forest elementary schools during the 1998-99 school year, but was shelved to provide salary increases for district employees.

Ana Escalante, who was a bilingual teacher at Humble Elementary School, will head the HISD program.

“This spring Escalante is working with the kindergarten students who will be in the program this fall,” said John Widmier, assistant superintendent for elementary schools.

There will be 24 students in the pilot program at both schools. In as much as the total program will span five years, parents who were not planning on staying in the district for that period of time were asked not to apply for their children.

“Of course some who plan to be here may have to move for some reason or another before school starts, so we established a waiting list from other elementary schools,” Widmier said. “In the future, we hope to be able to expand the program to other elementary schools in the district.”

As the first grade students move to second grade, a new group will enter at the first grade level. The immersion program is a method of foreign language instruction in which the regular school curriculum is taught through the medium of language.

During the first year, students will receive 90 percent of their instruction in Spanish. In the second year, there will be an 80-20 percent split and change by 10 percent each year until they students reach fifth grade when their studies will be 50 percent in Spanish and 50 percent in English.

“This way, when a student in the program finishes fifth grade they will be completely bilingual,” Widmier said.

Students will study reading, language arts, math, science and social studies through the medium of another language. Their physical education and music classes will continue to be in English.

In the classroom the teacher speaks in the second language while making use of visual aids and body language. Even though children may use English, they are encouraged to use the second languages vocabulary and expressions with which they are comfortable.

School board members Lynn Fields and Ann Willott expressed enthusiasm for the program at the April board of trustees meeting. Both served on the task force.

“This is an answer to my prayers and an awesome opportunity for our students,” said HISD board member Lynn Fields. “When children learn a second language at an early age it is easier for them to pick up other languages as they get older.”

Board member Ann Willott said this program has been long awaited.

“I feel we are preparing our children for the future,” Willott said. “More and more employers are requiring candidates for employment to be bilingual. Our students will benefit from the program for the rest of their lives.”

To create the HISD program, a task force studied different models of delivering a Spanish program to the pilot schools that could eventually be expanded to other elementary schools in the district.

The task force visited four campuses in the Houston Independent School District that were delivering Spanish instruction for the majority of the school day to English-speaking children beginning in the primary grades.

The four campuses who had the program were successfully implementing a dual language program to teach Spanish-speaking students to speak English and English-speaking students to speak Spanish. The model in place required half of a class at each grade level to be Spanish speaking, a target that officials said would be unattainable at the HISD pilot campuses.

In 1999, members of the task force spoke with staff at the Alamo Heights School District in San Antonio. They discussed the immersion program which Alamo Heights implemented to deliver Spanish instruction to one class of students in first grade at each of its two elementary schools.

Their plan was to expand the program to include second grade the next year and then follow with third, fourth and fifth grades.



Comments are closed.