HEADLINE: HOUR 1; PRINCIPAL OF SCHOOL IN DALTON, GEORGIA, TALKS ABOUT BILINGUAL EDUCATION OF STUDENTS IN THE DALTON SCHOOL SYSTEM
ANCHORS: LINDA WERTHEIMER
BODY:
LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:
Another Georgia town confronting cultural change is Dalton, called by its residents the carpet capital of the world because much of the carpet made in America comes from Dalton’s mills. Over the last dozen years, large numbers of Mexican immigrants have come north to work in those mills, and they’ve put their children in public school. More than 40 percent of Dalton’s enrollment is Hispanic now, up from about 1 percent in 1986.
Dalton’s response to its growing Hispanic population has been to provide bilingual education for everyone, starting with the youngest children. There are bilingual teachers or teaching assistants in every class. The school system has formed an alliance with Monterey University in Mexico to help train teachers. Frankie Beard is the principal of the Roan School, kindergarten to second grade.
Mrs. FRANKIE BEARD (Principal, Roan School): We have sent teachers each summer to Mexico, and essentially intensive Spanish is taught. They become acquainted with the schools in Mexico and have a deeper understanding of where our students are coming from.
WERTHEIMER: What happens to the English-speaking children?
Mrs. BEARD: They are learning Spanish. All of the children in Dalton, K through three and seven through 12 receive Spanish instruction. And we have what we call a two-way bilingual program. In that program are English-only speakers and Spanish-only speakers, or they were when they started, and now they are–both of the two groups of children are reading on grade level in English and in Spanish by the second grade.
WERTHEIMER: So many communities in this country have gone in another direction. They’ve decided to sort of plunge non-English speakers into English instruction, just get them speaking English as fast as possible and never mind the bilingual element. Why did Dalton decide to do it differently?
Mrs. BEARD: Dalton has always been in the forefront of innovation and change, and I feel like we did look into and read a lot of research that has been going on throughout the United States. We visited model schools throughout the States and came back, digested what we had seen, and decided that this was the route that we wanted to take with our children. And we feel like it’s a progressive move; we are a progressive system.
WERTHEIMER: To some extent, your community is running sort of counter to trends in other parts of the country. Did you have any families come in and object to the idea of bilingual education and say they wanted their kids in an English class and they wanted them to speak English and this is America and so on?
Mrs. BEARD: Well, number one, we do assure parents that–and assure anyone who visits our schools–and we do have quite a few visitors–but our number-one goal is to teach English, and English will always be the major language in this country as far as the trend is, and that’s what I hope and we all hope.
But actually, in the eight years that I have been principal, and since we have started the program, I have had one parent that came in and talked to me about it. The parent’s child–this child was removed from the Spanish class ’cause, you know, we wanted it to be optional; if they did not want their child in there, then we took their child out. However, within two to three weeks, the child was back in the Spanish class at the insistence of the child; the parents came back in and asked that she be returned to the Spanish class.
Now I think that most of our parents recognize the importance of being bilingual to their child’s future.
WERTHEIMER: Mrs. Beard, thank you very much.
Mrs. BEARD: You are welcome.
WERTHEIMER: Frankie Beard, she is the principal of the Roan School in Dalton, Georgia.
ROBERT SIEGEL (Host): Dick Gephardt backs Al Gore. That story next on NPR’s ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
Comments are closed.