Bilingual Program Helps Passaic Kids Bridge Language Gap

PASSAIC—With English-speaking kindergartners in one room learning about “tall”and”short”and Spanish-speaking children next door learning to read”Mi mami me ama,”the morning lessons at School 8 seem like any other in Passaic: children being taught in the language they know best.

But in the afternoon, things start to get interesting for the full-day kindergartners. That’s when the Spanish-speaking children walk to Jan Kistner’s classroom for instruction in English, and the English-speaking children, who start in Kistner’s class, walk to Aurelia DeLeon’s room, where they learn Spanish.

It’s all part of a dual-language program established this year for 35 students to meet two increasingly important goals.

In a district where children speak 23 different languages, and 7,200 of the 10,300 students speak Spanish at home, officials want children to learn English as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, with the state’s new core curriculum standards requiring that all students be able to communicate in a language other than English by 2002, the district, like many in the state, is eager to experiment.

And this approach, under which English- and Spanish-speaking students sit side by side in the same classroom for the day’s third rotation, takes advantage of the district’s diversity.

It’s not uncommon, Kistner said, for a student to translate her English instructions to a colleague learning the language.”It’s a buddy system,” she said.”The whole thing is they should feel good about themselves.”

Although it’s easiest to learn a new language at a young age, it can still be confusing. So even though DeLeon requires English-speaking students to attempt a request in Spanish if they want a sip from the water fountain, she still accepts hybrid attempts like,”Yo quiero water”or”I want agua.”

The Spanish-speaking students struggle some in English, too. When Kistner asked Spanish speakers what food Jewish people eat on Hanukkah, they sat in silence until one guessed”dreidels,”which are children’s toys.

But when she showed Spanish speakers a book where each page had increasing numbers of animals, most students could count and name them in English.

Also, Kistner is instructed to use words that are more accessible to Spanish speakers. Rather than demand”quiet,”she can ask for “silence,”which is similar to the Spanish word”silencio,”noted Nicholas Calamusa, the district’s supervisor of bilingual instruction.

State rules beginning in 2002 require fourth-graders to “initiate simple statements”and”express basic personal needs”in a second language. And 12th-graders should”comprehend fluent speakers in everyday situations.”

The dual-language approach begun in October is the district’s first step toward meeting the state goals. The kindergartners may continue in the program through the fifth grade, while DeLeon and Kistner get new kindergarten students in September, Calamusa said. Also, a second school in Passaic may begin the program in September.

By this spring, Calamusa said, the district hopes to have a plan in place that will educate hundreds of first- and second-graders in a second language by September. Stressing that the discussions are in the preliminary stages, he said one possibility is for first-graders to be instructed in Spanish for part of the day two or three times a week.

“Our country as a whole is recognizing that it makes good business sense for people to be able to work and speak in multiple languages,” Calamusa said.

Shaniqua DeLillo, 6, isn’t thinking about the global marketplace yet, but the English speaker has a simpler reason for enjoying instruction in Spanish:”Because I like Mrs. DeLeon,”she said.

Although some English speakers in the program are African-American or white, most are Latinos who are fluent in English, and in some cases, speak little or no Spanish. But their families want them to learn the language of their heritage, Calamusa said.

The dual-language program may also benefit Hispanics new to English.

Traditionally in Passaic, students lacking English proficiency are taught subject matter like science and history in their native tongue, and study English as a second language for part of the day. This continues until students are considered ready for all English-speaking classes, a process that can take several years.

Donna Christian, who researched 160 schools nationwide, wrote that there are advantages to teaching students in their native tongue, and that speaking a foreign language should not be considered”a problem to be overcome.” Christian wrote in 1994 that under the dual-language program, also known as the two-way bilingual approach, “students native languages are highly valued and their language knowledge is considered a resource.”

Christian wrote for the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning that two-way approaches were tried as far back as 1963 in Miami, and are now becoming more prevalent.

Passaic modeled its approach on one that began in Englewood six years ago.

The approaches vary from school to school, Christian wrote. In some instances, students learn exclusively in English for one week, and then exclusively in Spanish for the next.



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