Workshop prepares teachers for 227

Retraining: Former bilingual educators learn how to comply with the English-only law.

Leslie Nateras isn’t sure what will happen in less than a month when she must begin teaching her Spanish-speaking first-graders their lessons in English.

How much Spanish can she legally use?

How will she teach the basic concepts?

How can she keep the children up to par in reading while they learn English?

One day after a judge upheld Proposition 227, which curtails bilingual instruction, the instructor at Cesar Chavez School was one of about 20 teachers attending a workshop on English immersion techniques at Curren School in Oxnard.

About 200 teachers already have turned out for training workshops sponsored by the Oxnard School District, which will begin implementing the initiative in its schools in just a few weeks.

Thursday’s session drew questions about what can be done under the law and what cannot. Could they preview material in Spanish before teaching it in English? Accept a child’s answer in Spanish? And what about those critical classroom rules — could they be posted in Spanish?

The problem is, there aren’t a lot of answers yet.

The initiative, passed by the voters on June 2 says classes shall be taught “overwhelmingly” in English but does not define what that means. So the district is asking its lawyer to come up with some kind of rough approximation that will meet the law.

District officials also are seeking legal advice on what can be said in Spanish and what cannot.

The teachers are hoping for some guidance soon.

Even if 20 percent of the instruction can be in Spanish, it will help, Nateras said. Instruction would be impossible without using some of the child’s native language, she said.

Rose Avenue teacher Lupe Lujan led a session for half a dozen first-grade teachers. Holding pink-covered lesson guides, they listened as Lujan showed them English books to begin making the children feel comfortable, how to use charts and graphs to teach math, materials in which Spanish words had been excised so they could be used.

Teachers are concerned about delivering the instruction in a humane and sensitive but effective way, Lujan said. “If you think we’re going to be stressed, how do you think the children are going to be?” she asked.

About 14 teachers gathered last month to draw up English immersion materials. Lujan says teachers already have kits of materials for teaching English as a second language, but a lot won’t be known until school gets started.

“We’re trying to be prepared, but until we’re doing it, how can we know what it’s going to be like?” she said.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” said Nateras. “I’m excited. It could work. It depends on so many things.”

Her biggest fear is that children will fall 30 days behind — that’s the time parents must wait before signing a waiver to keep students under 10 in bilingual programs.

“In first grade that’s a long time, and we can’t make it up,” she said.



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