English classes translate into success

A Haltom City school teaches the language to students and their parents each summer.

HALTOM CITY – In a classroom at Birdville Elementary School, Pascual Retana of Haltom City trips over the sounds of the English language he struggles to master.

Down the hall, 12-year-old Pascual Jr. playfully mimics the accent of a British passenger aboard the Titanic as the movie soundtrack blares in the background.

Father and son are determined to speak fluent English. So, on weekdays, they pack their lunches and head for Birdville Elementary, which offers a bilingual program for 250 students and their parents each summer.

“We parents have never been to an American school,” Retana, 31, said in Spanish. “But we’re motivated in a sense, forced to go, because of what is happening, the rules that are changing in California.

“Lawmakers in California are destroying the Latino. ” Retana, like many other Hispanic parents in Haltom City, fears that new ideas embraced by California – particularly last week’s vote to eliminate bilingual education – will gain in popularity in Texas.

Texas educators say they have no plans to follow the Pacific state’s lead. Programs such as Birdville’s, now in its seventh summer, confirm the strong support of bilingual education among North Texas educators, they point out.

Thousands of students in North Texas speak a language other than English at home. More than 2,100 of those students are enrolled in Northeast Tarrant County schools. The overwhelming majority – almost 1,700 – are clustered in the Birdville and Hurst-Euless-Bedford school districts. Birdville, for example, has students who speak 20 native languages.

Birdville and H-E-B are required to have bilingual programs taught by teachers who are fluent in the students’ native languages and certified in bilingual education. In Texas, any school district with more than 20 students in the same grade who speak the same foreign language must develop a bilingual program for them.

The other districts – Carroll, Grapevine-Colleyville, Keller and Northwest – use the English as a Second Language program. It tends to provide less formal instruction in the child’s native language, and its teachers don’t have to be fluent in a foreign language.

Northwest has at least five languages represented, and it is planning to begin a Spanish bilingual program in a few years, said Cindy Brown, the district’s coordinator of special programs.

“Bilingual programs have a lot of variations,” Brown said. “The one we’re looking at is one that starts out truly bilingual, where students get 50 percent English, 50 percent Spanish. ” Typically, bilingual students are introduced to a diet of Spanish, gradually making the switch to more mixed portions of English and Spanish, until English becomes the dominant language.

“Research says that children need three to four years to be able to transfer their knowledge from Spanish to English,” said Georgene Mais, Birdville’s director of elementary instruction. “It’s just amazing when that happens. After they’ve been taught to read in their native language, they’re able to make that change into English so much easier. “

The foundation of bilingual education lies in the belief that if students are taught basic reading concepts in their native languages, it is easier for them to transfer that knowledge into English.

“We emphasize English,” said Acela Paliotta, H-E-B’s director of bilingual education/ESL/foreign language. “We know this is an English-speaking country, so we use Spanish only to build on concepts and skills so they don’t lose it. “

But critics of bilingual education say such carry-over isn’t happening. Bilingual education, skeptics say, inhibits students from acquiring English. Many youths may never completely master either language, they say.

“The research and the literature that says these kids are embarrassed and withdrawn? It’s not true,” said Bivra Mock, who teaches English as a Second Language at Haltom and Richland middle schools. “These are the happiest kids at school. I don’t see the big uproar over bilingual. To me, it holds kids back. ” Mock spends two hours a day with ESL students in grades six through eight. They speak little or no English but are too old to enroll in a bilingual program. If students cannot complete homework assignments, Mock interprets for them until they can do it independently.

“I spend half of the time doing their homework, but it pays off,” she said. “I had six ESL students pass TAAS the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills this year.

“My goal is to teach them to be successful Americans,” said Mock, who spent 20 years in Venezuela, including several years teaching native students English. “My goal is not to teach Vietnamese culture.

That’s not my job. My job is to teach them English so they can succeed here. That’s what those kids want to do. They’re not looking back to Vietnam. They want to succeed here. “

Students enrolled in Birdville’s summer bilingual program can polish up their English at school, which can be a missed opportunity if they stay at home, educators say.

In one pre-kindergarten classroom, 5-year-old Jorge Tunchez grabs a crayon and announces to his teacher, Angela Berry, “Green! “

Nearby, about two dozen 5- and 6-year-olds form a wide circle.

Newcomer Anna Tarankov, who arrived five years ago from Russia, stands near Anais Soto of Mexico and Yen Thai of Vietnam.

“Let everyone stomp like me! ” the girls sing in English, pounding their feet. “Come and join into the game. You’ll find that it’s always the same! “

Down the hall, young Pascual and other sixth-graders tape paper cutouts of sea-swept passengers to a poster of the sinking Titanic.

The students say they prefer classes in which their peers speak only English.

“That’s because then we’re in a class where everybody speaks English well, so you get used to it and you start to speak English,” said Melissa Guerra, 13, who emigrated from Mexico about a year ago.

Paula Topete, 13, also a one-year arrival, nods. “You can’t just start in Spanish. When everybody talks in English, you talk in English. “

The older Retana has spent 10 years of his life in the United States. It’s time to learn English, the Mexico native says in Spanish.

“Why do we come to school? ” he said. “Because we want to improve ourselves. We want to be part of the mainstream. “

Schoolhouse talk

The number of students in each district whose first language is not English: Birdville, 820 Carroll, 20 Fort Worth, 18,470 Grapevine-Colleyville, 109 H-E-B, 876 Irving, 7,000 Keller, 241 Northwest, 91

Languages spoken by students enrolled in the summer school program in Birdville school district: Arabic, Chinese, French, Gujarati, Korean, Laotian, Malayalam, Pashto, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese



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