Two-Way Programs Encourage Bilingualism

Kids learn the language from each other.

It is a cold and sunny Thursday, the first of December, and inside Englewood’s Donald A. Quarles School, 5-year-old Andre York is flipping through a stack of flashcards in search of words that describe the day.

None of the cards contains words in York’s native language , English, but he manages to find a few he recognizes: jueves, frio, diciembre.

Andre arranges them into a sentence and tacks them on a cork board. His classmates read along with him: “Hoy es jueves, diciembre uno, hace frio, hace sol.”

Today is Thursday, December first, it is cold, it is sunny.

The moment is one small slice of a new and growing movement in bilingual education called two-way or dual-language development. By putting equal numbers of English-speaking and limited-English-speaking students in the same class, in this case, a mix of African-American, Latino, and white students, the goal is to make all the students bilingual.

Englewood is in the second year of its two-way program, and for the next three years will be funded by a $ 600,000 federal grant. It’s the only federally funded two-way program in New Jersey.

Watching like a proud parent on the sidelines is Elizabeth Willaum, director of bilingual education for Englewood’s public schools. “This allows the children to learn the language from each other, as well as from the teacher,” she whispers to a visitor. “It creates relationships between kids that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. To me, it’s like magic to watch it happen.”

As more and more immigrants make New Jersey their home, efforts like two-way bilingual education raise larger questions: Should English be the nation’s lone language? Or, like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and Israel, should we recognize, maybe even encourage and financially support, bilingualism?

“We have become more intolerant as a nation,” Willaum said. “If we don’t do it in our communities, why should we expect the children to do it? But this forces them to do it, it forces them to rely on each other.”

In Englewood, as with most two-way programs, the second language is Spanish. Classes are taught half in English and half in Spanish. In first grade, for example, the morning classes are in English and the afternoon ones are in Spanish. In kindergarten, one day is all English and the next is all Spanish.

Kindergarten students spend the Spanish days in a classroom where every poster, flashcard, book, and calendar is in Spanish. In fact, not even visitors are allowed to speak English. And when their teacher, Marta Manetti, tries to speak to a visitor in English, her pupils scold her, “En Espanol!” Most bilingual education programs aim to teach English, as quickly as possible, to immigrant students. Often called transitional or immersion programs, the goal is to give students enough English skills so they can be mainstreamed into regular classes. The two-way approach has a broader goal.

“This is not just a language program, it’s a multicultural enrichment,” Willaum said. “And parents see the community changing. A lot of African-American parents want their children to learn Spanish.”

Many New Jersey schools are failing their limited-English students, Willaum said, because there’s nothing “bi” about bilingual education.

The U.S. Department of Education funds 61 two-way programs, most of them in New York and California and almost all of them, like Englewood’s, English-Spanish programs. But more than 100 school districts across the country operate similar programs, in many cases with local or state funding.

James Lyons, president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, said a shortage of bilingual teachers has prompted school districts to merge English- and Spanish-speaking students so they can teach one another their native languages. “That’s the hot program right now,” Lyons said.

But not every district has welcomed the approach. A plan in Washington, D.C., for a two-way program recently pitted African-American and Central American neighbors against each other. Teachers, most of them black, fear they will be replaced because they are not bilingual.

And many black parents think the program will be more helpful to their Latino neighbors than their own children.

In Englewood, African-American, white, and Latino youngsters, even if they can’t converse clearly with one another, play with blocks and dolls together, using hand motions and facial expressions to communicate. In one class, speaking a mix of Spanish and English, pupils cut out pictures of menorahs in honor of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, or, as the sign in their classroom says, “el Festival de las Luces.”

“How’s that for multicultural?” Willaum boasts.

The Englewood program is for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first-grade students. Another grade level will be added each year. In a first-grade class, a teacher asks one African-American pupil: “Como esta, John?” “I’m not done yet,” he tells her, as he tapes together a paper dreidel, a top-shaped toy used in a game played during Hanukkah.

At least he understands the question, Willaum says. And, in time, he’ll be able to respond in Spanish.

“My hope is that these programs will spread like wildfire. It really validates both languages. It gives value to both languages, and the culture that’s attached to it.”



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